An Collaboration of Our Senses: The Royal Ballet Teams Up with Visually Impaired Artist for Groundbreaking New Show

The Royal Ballet traditionally offered headphones with descriptive narration so that visually impaired patrons could track the performance on stage. Currently, through a revolutionary new work, the whole crowd will hear such narration within a production that examines how visual impairment can transform our responses to sensation, audio and narrative.

Visually Impaired Creator Works with Celebrated Dance Creators

The blind artist, a blind creator, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and musician Max Richter in producing a recent Royal Ballet production that will launch on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

Through her work, Healey is guided by a desire to illustrate how visual impairment and disability can present an different type of awareness for all people. Her rich spoken descriptions, integrated with the score, forms the center of the performance on stage.

"Creating world-class ballet and musical theater for each person" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's leader, the troupe is focusing on "complete inclusion – encouraging creators and audiences to discover dance in life-changing new ways," he said.

Various Dance Creators Work on Fresh Performance

The fresh production is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as McGregor, each working with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the curator of this work, said: "International Ballet Day was founded on the idea of access. After a ten years, we're pushing that idea more to examine how impaired outlooks can shape our creative medium, and welcome patrons of every capability and backgrounds to encounter dance in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator realized that sighted people who had experienced the artist's spoken descriptions felt it helped them grasp dance, which can look so abstract.

Inspiring Collaboration Of Expert and Non-Professional Performers

In one dance piece, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless since birth and who had long assumed that ballet was "primarily for individuals with vision". But the dancer has realized that it in fact "involves a lot of emotion and feelings" and engages perceptions, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s personal story of earlier getting lost on his way home and using the sun to orient his way back had motivated a duet in which Dixon becomes the "gentle warmth of the sun around Kikuchi as they move together," Malcomson said.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a intuition that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the sunlight itself, I could sense the heat … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sunshine was a great guide to me. The sunlight could be a powerful symbol. So the narrative developed from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Special Relationship with Dance

The blind artist, an scholar of disability studies at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and being blind invites a dynamic bond with movement in a way that is like a expert performer's connection with their physical self and dance."

In partnering with the performers, the artist was striving to convey what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through vision," she said. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their body, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their physical form are experiencing.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] attire, stage lights, stage design and sound artists, the perceptions and artistry of blindness are constantly visible as we, visually impaired and sighted persons, build a connection through our love of dance and dance. It is this creativity and affection that I try to integrate into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the senses guided by blindness."

She noted: "Even though the vision of the dance, the stunning visual feast, is available before the audience, there is so much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is inviting seeing and blind viewers alike into the invisible. What I hope is that, when viewers depart, they sense ballet in a new way, and they’re also experiencing the existence, and listening to the perceptions of, blindness in new and active ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose compositions have accumulated more than 3.5 billion digital listens, stated the spoken narration established a rapport between blindness and sight "through a audio environment, giving voice to that which remains unseen". He added: "It is not simply a explanation of a show. It is performance."

World Ballet Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s global partners for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will additionally offer access to exclusive video, rehearsals and newly commissioned productions – broadcast live via online channels.