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The Royal Ballet traditionally offered headphones with audio descriptions so that visually impaired viewers could follow the movement on stage. Now, via a groundbreaking new work, the entire gathering will experience such descriptions within a piece that explores how blindness can redefine our perceptions to experience, audio and storytelling.

Blind Creator Partners with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind creator, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a new Royal Ballet commission that will debut on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

Through her work, Healey is motivated by a desire to demonstrate how blindness and physical challenge can offer an unique type of awareness for each individual. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the score, forms the core of the show on stage.

"Creating top-tier ballet and musical theater for each person" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is concentrating on "complete inclusion – encouraging performers and patrons to encounter ballet in transformative fresh approaches," he explained.

Multiple Dance Creators Partner on New Performance

The new work is being created by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, all collaborating with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the director of this production, commented: "International Ballet Day was established on the principle of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're expanding that idea more to consider how disabled viewpoints can influence our art form, and encourage audiences of all abilities and backgrounds to encounter ballet in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator recognized that sighted people who had experienced the artist's descriptive audio believed it assisted them comprehend ballet, which can look so complex.

Inspiring Partnership Of Expert and Non-Professional Dancers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind from childhood and who had always thought that ballet was "primarily for individuals with vision". But Kikuchi has discovered that it in fact "includes a lot of sensation and sentiments" and taps into senses, "visual and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of earlier becoming disoriented on his way home and using the sun to direct his way back had inspired a duet in which Dixon becomes the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they move together," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be radiating from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the rays itself, I could sense the temperature … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a excellent assistant to me. The sun could be a powerful metaphor. So the tale originated from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Unique Relationship with Motion

Healey, an academic of disability research at the University of Toronto, said: "Blindness and being blind fosters a dynamic relationship with motion in a way that is like a professional dancer’s bond with their physical self and motion."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was striving to express what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she explained. "I converse with the dancers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they’re thinking, how their body are feeling.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] clothing, illumination, set and music creators, the viewpoints and innovation of visual impairment are always there as we, blind and sighted people, establish a connection through our love of dance and dance. It is this creativity and affection that I try to weave into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the senses guided by blindness."

She continued: "Even though the view of the performance, the gorgeous visual feast, is present in front of the patrons, there is much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is blindness that is inviting seeing and blind audience members alike into the hidden. What I desire is that, when patrons exit, they experience performance in a distinct way, and they’re also sensing the presence, and hearing the understandings of, visual impairment in new and vibrant ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose recordings have amassed more than 3.5bn streams, said the audio descriptions established a connection between visual impairment and sight "via a soundscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He added: "It is not simply a narration of a performance. This is the performance itself."

World Ballet Event Partners

The company's global collaborators for International Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will also offer access to backstage footage, practice sessions and recently created productions – transmitted in real-time via the event website.