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This prestigious ballet company for years offered headphones with descriptive narration so that visually impaired patrons could follow the action on stage. Now, through a innovative production, the whole audience will experience such narration within a piece that explores how blindness can redefine our responses to feeling, sound and dramatic expression.

Blind Artist Partners with Renowned Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired professional, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in producing a new ballet company work that will debut on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as declared this week.

In her art, Healey is driven by a ambition to illustrate how blindness and physical challenge can provide an alternative type of perception for each individual. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the composition, creates the core of the show on stage.

"Making world-class dance and opera for each person" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's leader, the troupe is focusing on "radical accessibility – encouraging creators and audiences to discover dance in transformative new ways," he explained.

Multiple Choreographers Work on New Performance

The recent commission is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to McGregor, every one working with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the curator of this work, stated: "International Ballet Day was founded on the concept of access. After a decade, we're extending that concept further to consider how disabled viewpoints can influence our performance style, and invite viewers of every capability and experiences to discover ballet in new ways."

After collaborating with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, the curator recognized that those with vision who had experienced the artist's audio narration found it aided them comprehend dance, which can look so abstract.

Inspiring Collaboration Of Expert and Amateur Performers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless from birth and who had long assumed that dance was "primarily for sighted people". But the dancer has understood that it truly "includes a lot of sensation and sentiments" and activates perceptions, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's personal story of earlier losing his way on his way home and relying on the sun to guide his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon represents the "soothing presence of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," the choreographer explained.

"It was during the day and I had a feeling that the sun should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the light itself, I could perceive the warmth … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sun was a good helper to me. The sunlight could be a good representation. So the tale originated from there."

Blindness Presents Unique Relationship with Movement

Healey, an academic of disability research at the Toronto university, commented: "Blindness and being blind invites a dynamic relationship with dance in a way that is similar to a expert performer's bond with their body and motion."

In collaborating with the performers, she was seeking to communicate what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not available through looking," she noted. "I talk with the performers to get a feeling of how they are in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their muscles are feeling.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] costume, stage lights, stage design and sound artists, the viewpoints and creativity of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted individuals, develop a rapport through our love of motion and dance. It is this creativity and affection that I try to integrate into the detailed narration. It is a cooperation of the perceptions guided by visual impairment."

The artist continued: "Even though the sight of the ballet, the gorgeous display, is there facing the viewers, there is much that they overlook or understanding, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging sighted and blind patrons both into the unseen. What I desire is that, when patrons leave, they experience ballet in a different way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and hearing the understandings of, visual impairment in new and vibrant ways."

Composer The Composer on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose recordings have accumulated more than billions of digital listens, stated the audio descriptions established a connection between blindness and vision "by means of a musical landscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He noted: "This isn't merely a description of a show. It is the performance itself."

World Dance Event Partners

The company's international collaborators for International Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will also supply availability to exclusive footage, practice sessions and recently created works – transmitted in real-time via online channels.