A Collaboration between the Senses: The Royal Ballet Joins with Blind Artist for Groundbreaking Fresh Show

This prestigious ballet company traditionally provided headphones with audio descriptions so that visually impaired audience members could follow the action on stage. Presently, in a groundbreaking production, the complete audience will experience such narration within a work that explores how blindness can transform our perceptions to feeling, audio and dramatic expression.

Blind Creator Partners with Famous Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired professional, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a new Royal Ballet production that will launch on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as announced this week.

In her art, the artist is motivated by a ambition to demonstrate how blindness and disability can present an different form of understanding for each individual. Her rich spoken descriptions, integrated with the music, creates the center of the performance on stage.

"Producing world-class dance and musical theater for everyone" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the organization is zeroing in on "total access – encouraging artists and viewers to experience dance in life-changing fresh approaches," he stated.

Multiple Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Production

The new work is being choreographed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, every one collaborating with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this production, said: "World Ballet Day was founded on the principle of inclusion. After a decade, we're expanding that notion further to examine how disabled perspectives can mold our performance style, and welcome audiences of all abilities and histories to encounter dance in innovative methods."

Having worked with Healey in Canada and Australia, he realized that individuals who can see who had encountered the artist's audio narration found it helped them comprehend dance, which can look so complex.

Touching Collaboration Between Expert and Amateur Performers

In a particular performance, 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 ballet was "mostly for those who can see". But Kikuchi has understood that it in fact "includes a lot of sensation and sentiments" and activates perceptions, "visual and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s personal story of earlier losing his way on his way home and relying on the sun to orient his way back had motivated a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "gentle warmth of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," Malcomson stated.

"This occurred during the day and I had a sense that the sunlight should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I wouldn’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 excellent helper to me. The sunlight could be a good symbol. So the tale developed from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Special Connection with Motion

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

In working with the performers, the artist was striving to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she noted. "I converse with the dancers to get a sense of how they feel in their body, where their respiration is, what they think, how their body are feeling.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, illumination, stage design and music artists, the perceptions and innovation of visual impairment are always there as we, blind and sighted individuals, establish a connection through our affection of movement and performance. It is this creativity and affection that I try to integrate into the detailed narration. It is a collaboration of the perceptions guided by blindness."

She added: "Even though the vision of the performance, the stunning display, is available in front of the audience, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming seeing and visually impaired audience members alike into the hidden. What I hope is that, when audience members exit, they feel performance in a different way, and they’re also feeling the existence, and hearing the understandings of, blindness in innovative and vibrant ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Narration

The composer, whose compositions have amassed more than billions of digital listens, said the descriptive commentary established a connection between blindness and vision "by means of a musical landscape, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He noted: "This isn't simply a narration of a production. It is the performance itself."

World Dance Day Collaborators

The company's global collaborators for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will also offer entry to exclusive material, preparations and recently created productions – transmitted in real-time via online channels.