A Partnership of Human Perception: The Royal Ballet Partners with Visually Impaired Artist for Innovative Fresh Performance

The Royal Ballet has long provided headphones with descriptive narration so that sightless audience members could understand the action on stage. Now, through a revolutionary new work, the entire gathering will listen to such descriptions within a piece that investigates how lack of sight can transform our perceptions to feeling, music and dramatic expression.

Blind Creator Partners with Celebrated Choreographers

Devon Healey, a visually impaired professional, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in producing a recent Royal Ballet work that will premiere on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

In her art, Healey is guided by a ambition to show how visual impairment and disability can offer an alternative mode of perception for each individual. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the score, establishes the heart of the show on stage.

"Producing world-class ballet and musical theater for everyone" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's leader, the troupe is focusing on "radical accessibility – encouraging creators and patrons to experience dance in revolutionary innovative methods," he said.

Various Choreographers Work on Fresh Work

The recent commission is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, each partnering with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the curator of this work, said: "International Ballet Day was founded on the principle of accessibility. Following a decade, we're extending that notion further to consider how challenged perspectives can mold our art form, and encourage audiences of diverse capacities and histories to discover ballet in fresh approaches."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, the curator realized that sighted people who had experienced the artist's descriptive audio felt it assisted them grasp ballet, which can look so abstract.

Inspiring Collaboration Of Professional and Amateur Performers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless since birth and who had always thought that ballet was "mainly for individuals with vision". But the dancer has discovered that it in fact "involves a lot of emotion and sentiments" and engages faculties, "visual and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of earlier getting lost on his way home and using the sunlight to guide his way back had motivated a dance piece in which the professional dancer becomes the "warm breath of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," Malcomson said.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a feeling that the sun should be shining from the west. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I couldn't see the sunlight itself, I could feel the warmth … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It led me home. The sun was a great assistant to me. The sunlight could be a good metaphor. So the tale originated from there."

Blindness Presents Unique Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an scholar of disability studies at the University of Toronto, said: "Blindness and lacking sight invites a dynamic relationship with motion in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's relationship with their physical self and movement."

In collaborating with the performers, she was attempting to express what "they feel in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she explained. "I speak with the performers to get a sense of how they are in their body, where their breath is, what they’re thinking, how their physical form are experiencing.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] clothing, stage lights, set and audio creators, the perceptions and artistry of blindness are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted people, establish a relationship through our passion of dance and dance. It is this creativity and passion that I try to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a partnership of the perceptions directed by blindness."

The artist continued: "While the vision of the ballet, the beautiful visual feast, is present in front of the viewers, there is much that they miss or valuing, and it is blindness that is inviting sighted and visually impaired viewers alike into the unseen. What I desire is that, when patrons leave, they feel ballet in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the presence, and listening to the viewpoints of, visual impairment in new and vibrant ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose compositions have gathered more than 3.5 billion online plays, said the descriptive commentary formed a relationship between visual impairment and sight "through a audio environment, offering narration to that which remains unseen". He continued: "It is not merely a narration of a show. This is the performance itself."

International Ballet Day Partners

The company's international associates for International Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will also offer entry to backstage footage, rehearsals and freshly produced productions – streamed live via the event website.