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The Royal Ballet has long made available headphones with descriptive narration so that visually impaired patrons could track the action on stage. Presently, in a revolutionary production, the whole audience will hear such narration within a production that investigates how blindness can reshape our reactions to feeling, sound and narrative.

Visually Impaired Artist Partners with Famous Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired professional, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in producing a fresh ballet company commission that will debut on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed this week.

Through her work, Healey is motivated by a wish to illustrate how blindness and disability can offer an different form of awareness for all people. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the composition, forms the heart of the production on stage.

"Making exceptional ballet and opera for everyone" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the company is concentrating on "radical accessibility – welcoming performers and audiences to discover ballet in life-changing innovative methods," he explained.

Various Choreographers Work on New Performance

The fresh production is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, every one working with Healey.

The curator, the director of this commission, commented: "World Ballet Day was created on the principle of access. After a ten years, we're expanding that idea further to consider how challenged viewpoints can shape our creative medium, and welcome viewers of all abilities and backgrounds to discover dance in new ways."

Having worked with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator recognized that individuals who can see who had encountered Healey’s spoken descriptions found it aided them comprehend ballet, which can seem so abstract.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Expert and Amateur Performers

In a particular duet, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired since birth and who had long assumed that ballet was "mostly for those who can see". But the dancer has realized that it in fact "includes a lot of emotion and feelings" and taps into perceptions, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s personal story of previously becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sun to guide his way back had influenced a dance piece in which the professional dancer embodies the "warm breath of the sun around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a sense that the sun should be shining from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the light itself, I could sense the temperature … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It led me home. The sun was a great guide to me. The sunlight could be a powerful symbol. So the story emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Unique Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an academic of disability research at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and being blind invites a dynamic bond with motion in a way that is similar to a expert performer's connection with their physical self and motion."

In collaborating with the dancers, the artist was attempting to communicate what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through sight," she said. "I converse with the dancers to get a feeling of how they feel in their body, where their respiration is, what they’re thinking, how their muscles are sensing.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] costume, illumination, stage design and sound artists, the perceptions and innovation of blindness are always there as we, visually impaired and seeing people, establish a rapport through our passion of movement and performance. It is this creativity and love that I strive to blend into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a partnership of the senses led by visual impairment."

The artist noted: "While the view of the dance, the beautiful spectacle, is available in front of the audience, there is a great deal that they overlook or valuing, and it is blindness that is encouraging sighted and visually impaired audience members equally into the unseen. What I wish is that, when audience members leave, they feel dance in a new way, and they’re also experiencing the being, and listening to the perceptions of, visual impairment in new and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

Richter, whose recordings have amassed more than 3.5bn streams, commented the spoken narration established a connection between visual impairment and vision "through a audio environment, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He continued: "This isn't just a explanation of a show. This is the art."

World Ballet Event Collaborators

The company's international collaborators for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will also provide entry to exclusive video, practice sessions and newly commissioned pieces – transmitted as it happens via the event website.