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The Royal Ballet has long made available headphones with spoken commentary so that visually impaired audience members could understand the movement on stage. Now, via a revolutionary new work, the entire audience will experience such commentary within a piece that examines how blindness can transform our perceptions to sensation, sound and storytelling.

Blind Artist Collaborates with Renowned Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired creator, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in developing a new Royal Ballet commission that will debut on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

In her art, the artist is driven by a ambition to illustrate how visual impairment and disability can present an alternative form of awareness for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, integrated with the score, establishes the core of the production on stage.

"Making top-tier dance and opera for all" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's leader, the organization is concentrating on "radical accessibility – welcoming performers and patrons to discover ballet in revolutionary new ways," he said.

Multiple Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Performance

The new work is being created by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, every one working with Healey.

The curator, the curator of this commission, commented: "World Ballet Day was created on the idea of accessibility. After a decade, we're expanding that idea further to examine how disabled viewpoints can influence our art form, and welcome viewers of diverse capacities and backgrounds to encounter ballet in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, the curator understood that those with vision who had encountered the artist's audio narration believed it helped them grasp dance, which can look so complex.

Inspiring Partnership Of Professional and Amateur Performers

In a particular dance piece, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from childhood and who had always thought that dance was "mainly for individuals with vision". But Kikuchi has discovered that it in fact "includes a lot of emotion and emotions" and taps into faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's individual experience of once becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sun to orient his way back had inspired a performance in which the professional dancer becomes the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they perform as one," Malcomson said.

"This occurred during the day and I had a sense that the sun should be shining from the west. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I couldn't see the rays itself, I could feel the warmth … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sun was a excellent assistant to me. The sun could be a meaningful representation. So the narrative originated from there."

Blindness Offers Special Connection with Movement

Healey, an assistant professor of disability research at the University of Toronto, said: "Visual impairment and lacking sight encourages a dynamic connection with dance in a way that is like a expert performer's relationship with their physical self and motion."

In working with the dancers, she was seeking to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through vision," she said. "I speak 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 experiencing.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] clothing, lighting, set and music artists, the viewpoints and innovation of visual impairment are ever present as we, blind and seeing persons, establish a relationship through our passion of motion and performance. It is this creativity and love that I strive to integrate into the spoken commentary. It is a collaboration of the senses directed by visual impairment."

The artist continued: "While the vision of the dance, the gorgeous spectacle, is available in front of the viewers, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is inviting seeing and visually impaired patrons alike into the unseen. What I hope is that, when viewers leave, they feel ballet in a new way, and they’re also feeling the being, and hearing the viewpoints of, visual impairment in new and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Narration

The composer, whose compositions have accumulated more than 3.5bn online plays, said the audio descriptions formed a relationship between blindness and sight "via a audio environment, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He continued: "This isn't just a narration of a show. It is the performance itself."

World Dance Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s global associates for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will additionally offer access to behind-the-scenes material, preparations and newly commissioned pieces – streamed in real-time via online channels.