🔗 Share this article

The Royal Ballet for years offered audio devices with audio descriptions so that visually impaired viewers could understand the action on stage. Now, through a innovative performance, the whole gathering will experience such descriptions within a work that examines how visual impairment can reshape our responses to experience, sound and dramatic expression.

Blind Artist Works with Renowned Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired creator, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and musician Max Richter in producing a fresh ballet company commission that will premiere on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

Through her work, Healey is driven by a desire to illustrate how visual impairment and physical challenge can provide an alternative form of awareness for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the score, establishes the core of the performance on stage.

"Producing exceptional dance and musical theater for each person" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the organization is focusing on "total access – encouraging performers and audiences to experience dance in revolutionary innovative methods," he explained.

Several Dance Creators Collaborate on New Performance

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

Robert Binet, the director of this production, stated: "International Ballet Day was established on the principle of inclusion. After a ten years, we're extending that concept deeper to explore how disabled perspectives can shape our performance style, and encourage audiences of diverse capacities and experiences to encounter ballet in fresh approaches."

After collaborating with Healey in Canada and Australia, he recognized that sighted people who had experienced Healey’s spoken descriptions felt it helped them grasp ballet, which can appear so complex.

Moving Collaboration Of Professional and Amateur Dancers

In one performance, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind since birth and who had always thought that ballet was "mainly for sighted people". But the dancer has understood that it actually "includes a lot of feeling and sentiments" and taps into senses, "sight-based and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s personal story of previously getting lost on his way home and using the sunlight to guide his way back had influenced a duet in which Dixon represents the "warm breath of the sun around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred during the day and I had a intuition that the sun should be shining from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I didn't perceive the sunlight itself, I could feel the warmth … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a great assistant to me. The sun could be a powerful symbol. So the story developed from there."

Blindness Presents Distinct Connection with Motion

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability research at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and being blind invites a dynamic bond with movement in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s connection with their body and movement."

In partnering with the dancers, she was attempting to communicate what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she explained. "I talk with the dancers to get a sense of how they are in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they’re thinking, how their physical form are feeling.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] costume, lighting, scenery and music designers, the viewpoints and creativity of blindness are always there as we, visually impaired and sighted people, build a relationship through our passion of dance and dance. It is this artistry and affection that I strive to integrate into the detailed narration. It is a collaboration of the perceptions directed by visual impairment."

The artist added: "Even though the sight of the dance, the beautiful display, is available facing the patrons, there is a great deal that they overlook or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging seeing and visually impaired viewers equally into the hidden. What I hope is that, when patrons leave, they feel performance in a different way, and they’re also sensing the being, and hearing the viewpoints of, visual impairment in fresh and vibrant ways."

Composer The Composer on Audio Narration

Richter, whose recordings have accumulated more than 3.5 billion online plays, stated the spoken narration formed a relationship between blindness and sight "by means of a audio environment, providing expression to that which does not always appear". He noted: "This isn't just a description of a performance. It is the performance itself."

International Dance Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s international partners for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The companies will additionally provide access to behind-the-scenes material, practice sessions and recently created works – broadcast in real-time via online channels.