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The Royal Ballet has long provided headphones with descriptive narration so that sightless patrons could understand the action on stage. Now, through a groundbreaking production, the complete audience will hear such narration within a production that investigates how lack of sight can redefine our responses to sensation, music and dramatic expression.

Blind Creator Collaborates with Celebrated Choreographers

Devon Healey, a blind creator, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in creating a fresh Royal Ballet work that will premiere on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as declared on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, the artist is driven by a desire to illustrate how blindness and disability can offer an alternative form of awareness for all people. Her rich spoken descriptions, integrated with the composition, establishes the core of the performance on stage.

"Producing world-class dance and opera for all" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's director, the organization is concentrating on "complete inclusion – inviting performers and audiences to discover ballet in revolutionary innovative methods," he explained.

Various Choreographers Work on New Performance

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

The curator, the organizer of this work, said: "World Ballet Day was created on the idea of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're extending that concept more to explore how challenged outlooks can mold our creative medium, and welcome viewers of all abilities and backgrounds to encounter ballet in new ways."

After collaborating with Healey in Canada and Australia, the curator recognized that sighted people who had experienced Healey’s audio narration believed it assisted them understand ballet, which can seem so abstract.

Moving Partnership Between Expert and Non-Professional Dancers

In one dance piece, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless from birth and who had always thought that dance was "mostly for individuals with vision". But the dancer has realized that it truly "includes a lot of sensation and emotions" and activates faculties, "visual and non-sight".

The dancer's personal story of earlier becoming disoriented on his way home and using the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a performance in which Dixon represents the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they move together," Malcomson said.

"It was during the day and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the sunlight itself, I could feel the warmth … So I continued moving to the west …. It guided me home. The sun was a good assistant to me. The sunlight could be a good symbol. So the narrative emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Unique Relationship with Dance

Healey, an assistant professor of disability research at the Toronto university, commented: "Blindness and lacking sight encourages a dynamic relationship with dance in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s relationship with their physical self and motion."

In collaborating with the dancers, the artist was attempting to convey what "they feel in their body, something that’s just not available through sight," she said. "I talk with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they consider, how their physical form are experiencing.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] costume, stage lights, stage design and music artists, the viewpoints and innovation of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and seeing people, establish a connection through our love of dance and dance. It is this innovation and passion that I attempt to weave into the detailed narration. It is a cooperation of the faculties directed by blindness."

The artist continued: "Even though the sight of the performance, the beautiful visual feast, is available in front of the patrons, there is a great deal that they miss or appreciating, and it is blindness that is inviting sighted and visually impaired audience members equally into the invisible. What I wish is that, when viewers leave, they experience performance in a new way, and they’re also sensing the being, and listening to the perceptions of, visual impairment in fresh and active ways."

Musician The Composer on Sound Descriptions

The composer, whose recordings have gathered more than 3.5 billion online plays, commented the audio descriptions formed a relationship between visual impairment and sight "through a soundscape, giving voice to that which remains unseen". He continued: "It is not merely a explanation of a show. It is the performance itself."

World Dance Event Partners

The company's global associates for International Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will furthermore offer availability to exclusive material, rehearsals and recently created works – transmitted in real-time via their official platform.