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The Royal Ballet traditionally made available audio devices with descriptive narration so that visually impaired audience members could understand the movement on stage. Now, through a revolutionary performance, the complete gathering will experience such commentary within a piece that investigates how blindness can transform our reactions to feeling, audio and dramatic expression.

Blind Creator Works with Famous Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind professional, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and composer Max Richter in producing a fresh Royal Ballet production that will debut on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as announced this week.

Within her creative practice, Healey is driven by a ambition to demonstrate how blindness and disability can present an different mode of awareness for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, integrated with the music, creates the heart of the performance on stage.

"Making world-class ballet and musical theater for each person" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's director, the company is focusing on "complete inclusion – encouraging creators and viewers to experience ballet in life-changing innovative methods," he explained.

Various Dance Creators Partner on Fresh Production

The fresh production is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to McGregor, all working with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this production, stated: "International Ballet Day was established on the concept of access. After a ten years, we're extending that concept deeper to explore how impaired perspectives can mold our art form, and encourage patrons of all abilities and experiences to experience dance in new ways."

Having worked with Healey in Canada and Australia, he understood that sighted people who had experienced the artist's audio narration found it assisted them understand dance, which can look so complex.

Inspiring Partnership Between Expert and Amateur Performers

In one performance, the company's performer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired from childhood and who had long assumed that ballet was "primarily for individuals with vision". But Kikuchi has realized that it truly "entails a lot of feeling and sentiments" and engages perceptions, "visual and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of once getting lost on his way home and relying on the sun to direct his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon represents the "soothing presence of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," the choreographer stated.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be beaming from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could sense the warmth … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sun was a good helper to me. The sun could be a meaningful representation. So the tale developed from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Distinct Connection with Movement

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the University of Toronto, commented: "Blindness and lacking sight fosters a dynamic relationship with movement in a way that is like a expert performer's connection with their physical self and motion."

In partnering with the dancers, she was attempting to express what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not available through sight," she said. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they are in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they think, how their body are feeling.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, illumination, stage design and audio artists, the understandings and creativity of visual impairment are ever present as we, blind and seeing persons, develop a relationship through our passion of movement and dance. It is this creativity and affection that I strive to weave into the detailed narration. It is a cooperation of the faculties guided by visual impairment."

She noted: "While the view of the ballet, the beautiful spectacle, is there before the viewers, there is much that they overlook or understanding, and it is blindness that is inviting sighted and blind audience members equally into the hidden. What I wish is that, when patrons leave, they sense ballet in a new way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and listening to the viewpoints of, visual impairment in fresh and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

Richter, whose works have gathered more than billions of streams, said the descriptive commentary formed a relationship between blindness and sight "by means of a soundscape, providing expression to that which remains unseen". He noted: "It is not just a description of a show. This is the performance itself."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The company's worldwide associates for International Ballet Day comprise the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will also offer access to backstage material, rehearsals and newly commissioned pieces – transmitted in real-time via online channels.