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The Royal Ballet traditionally made available audio devices with audio descriptions so that sightless audience members could track the action on stage. Presently, via a groundbreaking new work, the entire audience will experience such descriptions within a work that investigates how lack of sight can reshape our reactions to feeling, sound and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Artist Partners with Famous Dance Creators

The blind artist, a blind professional, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in developing a fresh ballet company production that will premiere on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, Healey is motivated by a desire to show how blindness and physical challenge can offer an different type of awareness for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the composition, establishes the core of the production on stage.

"Producing exceptional dance and opera for everyone" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's leader, the troupe is zeroing in on "total access – welcoming artists and audiences to experience ballet in transformative new ways," he said.

Multiple Choreographers Partner on Fresh Work

The recent commission is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, every one collaborating with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this commission, stated: "World Ballet Day was created on the concept of access. Following a decade, we're extending that concept further to consider how impaired perspectives can influence our art form, and invite viewers of all abilities and experiences to encounter ballet in fresh approaches."

Having worked with Healey in Canada and Australian locations, the curator realized that sighted people who had encountered Healey’s spoken descriptions found it assisted them understand dance, which can appear so abstract.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Professional and Amateur Performers

In one performance, the company's performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind from birth and who had always thought that dance was "mainly for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it actually "entails a lot of emotion and feelings" and taps into senses, "sight-based and non-sight".

The dancer's personal story of earlier getting lost on his way home and relying on the sun to orient his way back had influenced a performance in which Dixon represents the "gentle warmth of the sun around his partner as they perform as one," the choreographer said.

"It was during the day and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be shining from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the light itself, I could sense the temperature … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sun was a great helper to me. The sun could be a meaningful symbol. So the tale originated from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Unique Relationship with Motion

The blind artist, an scholar of disability studies at the Toronto university, said: "Blindness and lacking sight encourages a vibrant bond with dance in a way that is like a professional dancer’s relationship with their body and movement."

In collaborating with the performers, she was striving to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not accessible through vision," she explained. "I converse with the performers to get a understanding of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they think, how their muscles are sensing.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] costume, illumination, scenery and sound artists, the viewpoints and creativity of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and sighted people, build a connection through our affection of movement and dance. It is this creativity and affection that I try to blend into the spoken commentary. It is a cooperation of the faculties guided by visual impairment."

The artist added: "Even though the view of the ballet, the stunning visual feast, is there in front of the viewers, there is so much that they overlook or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is inviting seeing and blind audience members equally into the unseen. What I wish is that, when audience members leave, they feel ballet in a different way, and they’re also feeling the existence, and hearing the perceptions of, blindness in new and active ways."

Composer The Composer on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose recordings have amassed more than 3.5 billion digital listens, commented the audio descriptions created a relationship between visual impairment and sight "via a musical landscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He continued: "It is not just a explanation of a production. This is performance."

International Dance Day Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide partners for International Ballet Day comprise the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will also provide entry to exclusive video, practice sessions and newly commissioned works – transmitted as it happens via their official platform.