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The Royal Ballet has long offered headphones with spoken commentary so that visually impaired viewers could follow the performance on stage. Presently, in a revolutionary new work, the whole audience will hear such narration within a work that investigates how lack of sight can transform our responses to experience, audio and storytelling.

Blind Artist Works with Renowned Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired creator, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and composer the celebrated composer in developing a recent Royal Ballet commission that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, Healey is motivated by a ambition to demonstrate how visual impairment and physical challenge can offer an alternative mode of perception for all people. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, blended with the music, forms the heart of the production on stage.

"Producing top-tier ballet and opera for each person" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the company is zeroing in on "total access – encouraging creators and patrons to experience dance in revolutionary new ways," he explained.

Multiple Choreographers Partner on New Production

The fresh production is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, each partnering with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this work, stated: "World Ballet Day was established on the concept of inclusion. Following a decade, we're expanding that concept more to explore how disabled perspectives can mold our creative medium, and invite audiences of every capability and backgrounds to discover dance in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he recognized that individuals who can see who had experienced Healey’s descriptive audio believed it helped them comprehend ballet, which can look so unclear.

Touching Collaboration Of Expert and Amateur Dancers

In one duet, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired from birth and who had always thought that ballet was "primarily for sighted people". But Kikuchi has understood that it actually "includes a lot of emotion and feelings" and activates senses, "sight-based and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s personal story of once becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sun to direct his way back had influenced a duet in which the professional dancer becomes the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they perform as one," the choreographer explained.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a sense that the sunlight should be shining from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the light itself, I could feel the heat … So I kept walking to the west …. It led me home. The sun was a great helper to me. The sunlight could be a good representation. So the story emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Special Relationship with Movement

Healey, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, said: "Visual impairment and lacking sight invites a dynamic relationship with movement in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s bond with their body and movement."

In working with the performers, she was attempting to convey what "they feel in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she explained. "I talk with the performers to get a sense of how they are in their physical self, where their breath is, what they consider, how their muscles are experiencing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] clothing, stage lights, scenery and audio creators, the understandings and artistry of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted individuals, establish a connection through our love of dance and dance. It is this creativity and affection that I attempt to integrate into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a collaboration of the senses led by visual impairment."

The artist added: "Although the vision of the dance, the beautiful spectacle, is there in front of the patrons, there is much that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is blindness that is welcoming seeing and visually impaired audience members equally into the unseen. What I wish is that, when audience members leave, they feel ballet in a new way, and they’re also experiencing the being, and hearing the perceptions of, visual impairment in fresh and vibrant ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose compositions have amassed more than billions of streams, said the spoken narration created a relationship between blindness and sight "via a audio environment, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not just a explanation of a production. This is performance."

International Ballet Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s international associates for International Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will also supply access to behind-the-scenes material, practice sessions and recently created productions – streamed as it happens via the event website.