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This prestigious ballet company has long provided headphones with descriptive narration so that visually impaired audience members could follow the movement on stage. Currently, in a revolutionary production, the entire audience will experience such narration within a production that explores how blindness can reshape our perceptions to feeling, sound and narrative.

Blind Artist Partners with Famous Choreographers

Devon Healey, a visually impaired artist, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a recent Royal Ballet production that will premiere on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as declared this week.

Within her creative practice, the artist is driven by a desire to show how visual impairment and disability can provide an unique type of understanding for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, woven with the music, establishes the center of the performance on stage.

"Creating top-tier ballet and opera for all" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's director, the troupe is concentrating on "complete inclusion – welcoming artists and patrons to experience ballet in life-changing fresh approaches," he explained.

Multiple Choreographers Work on Fresh Work

The new work is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, all partnering with Healey.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this production, stated: "World Ballet Day was created on the idea of accessibility. Following a decade, we're extending that idea further to examine how disabled perspectives can mold our creative medium, and welcome audiences of every capability and backgrounds to discover ballet in fresh approaches."

Having worked with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, he realized that individuals who can see who had heard the artist's spoken descriptions believed it aided them grasp dance, which can look so complex.

Touching Partnership Between Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular dance piece, the company's performer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired since birth and who had previously believed that dance was "mainly for those who can see". But Kikuchi has discovered that it actually "includes a lot of feeling and sentiments" and taps into faculties, "sight-based and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s personal story of once becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sun to orient his way back had inspired a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "warm breath of the sunlight around his partner as they perform as one," Malcomson explained.

"It was during the day and I had a intuition that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I didn't perceive the sunlight itself, I could perceive the temperature … So I persisted in walking to the west …. It guided me home. The sun was a excellent guide to me. The sun could be a good symbol. So the tale developed from there."

Blindness Offers Special Connection with Movement

The blind artist, an academic of disability research at the Toronto university, said: "Visual impairment and being blind invites a active bond with movement in a way that is similar to a expert performer's bond with their body and dance."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was seeking to convey what "they feel in their physical being, something that’s just not available through vision," she said. "I converse with the dancers to get a sense of how they are in their body, where their breath is, what they consider, how their muscles are sensing.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] clothing, illumination, set and music creators, the understandings and artistry of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and seeing persons, develop a rapport through our affection of motion and performance. It is this artistry and affection that I attempt to blend into the spoken commentary. It is a cooperation of the perceptions led by blindness."

She added: "While the view of the ballet, the gorgeous display, is there before the viewers, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is blindness that is inviting seeing and visually impaired patrons both into the hidden. What I wish is that, when patrons depart, they feel ballet in a distinct way, and they’re also sensing the presence, and perceiving the perceptions of, blindness in innovative and vibrant ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose compositions have gathered more than 3.5bn online plays, said the descriptive commentary created a connection between blindness and vision "via a soundscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He added: "This isn't merely a description of a show. It is the performance itself."

International Dance Day Partners

The company's global partners for World Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will furthermore offer access to exclusive material, practice sessions and newly commissioned works – transmitted in real-time via the event website.