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This prestigious ballet company for years offered headphones with spoken commentary so that blind viewers could follow the action on stage. Now, through a groundbreaking production, the complete gathering will hear such commentary within a production that explores how blindness can redefine our responses to experience, music and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Creator Collaborates with Celebrated Choreographers

Devon Healey, a visually impaired professional, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in developing a new Royal Ballet work that will launch on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as announced recently.

In her art, Healey is driven by a wish to show how blindness and disability can provide an unique form of understanding for each individual. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the score, establishes the core of the show on stage.

"Making world-class ballet and musical theater for each person" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's leader, the troupe is focusing on "total access – encouraging performers and audiences to encounter ballet in transformative fresh approaches," he explained.

Various Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Production

The new work is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to McGregor, all working with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this production, said: "World Ballet Day was established on the principle of inclusion. After a decade, we're pushing that idea deeper to consider how challenged perspectives can shape our creative medium, and encourage viewers of all abilities and histories to experience dance in innovative methods."

Having worked with Healey in Canada and Australia, the curator recognized that sighted people who had heard the artist's descriptive audio found it aided them comprehend ballet, which can look so abstract.

Touching Partnership Of Professional and Non-Professional Dancers

In a particular duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind from childhood and who had always thought that dance was "primarily for individuals with vision". But the dancer has discovered that it in fact "includes a lot of sensation and feelings" and activates faculties, "sight-based and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s personal story of previously losing his way on his way home and relying on the sunlight to orient his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon embodies the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they move together," Malcomson stated.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the light itself, I could feel the temperature … So I continued moving to the west …. It directed me home. The sun was a great guide to me. The sunlight could be a powerful metaphor. So the narrative originated from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Distinct Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability studies at the University of Toronto, commented: "Blindness and lacking sight invites a active relationship with movement in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s relationship with their physical self and motion."

In working with the performers, she was seeking to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not available through vision," she said. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they are in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they consider, how their physical form are experiencing.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] attire, lighting, stage design and music artists, the perceptions and artistry of visual impairment are constantly visible as we, visually impaired and sighted persons, develop a relationship through our passion of dance and dance. It is this creativity and love that I attempt to blend into the spoken commentary. It is a collaboration of the faculties directed by blindness."

She added: "Although the sight of the ballet, the gorgeous display, is there before the viewers, there is so much that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is blindness that is inviting seeing and visually impaired patrons alike into the invisible. What I hope is that, when audience members exit, they feel dance in a different way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and listening to the viewpoints of, visual impairment in fresh and vibrant ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Narration

Richter, whose compositions have amassed more than 3.5 billion online plays, stated the spoken narration created a connection between blindness and sight "via a soundscape, offering narration to that which is not always visible". He noted: "It is not simply a explanation of a show. It is the performance itself."

World Ballet Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide partners for World Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will also provide entry to exclusive material, practice sessions and newly commissioned pieces – streamed in real-time via their official platform.