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The Royal Ballet traditionally provided audio devices with audio descriptions so that blind audience members could understand the action on stage. Now, in a groundbreaking new work, the complete audience will listen to such commentary within a work that investigates how visual impairment can transform our perceptions to feeling, music and storytelling.

Blind Artist Partners with Renowned Dance Creators

The blind artist, a blind artist, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and musician Max Richter in developing a recent ballet company commission that will debut on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, Healey is guided by a wish to illustrate how visual impairment and disability can offer an alternative form of perception for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, woven with the music, creates the center of the show on stage.

"Creating top-tier dance and opera for all" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's director, the company is focusing on "total access – inviting artists and patrons to encounter dance in transformative fresh approaches," he explained.

Multiple Choreographers Partner on New Performance

The recent commission is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, all collaborating with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this work, stated: "International Ballet Day was established on the concept of inclusion. After a ten years, we're pushing that notion further to explore how challenged outlooks can influence our creative medium, and welcome patrons of all abilities and experiences to discover ballet in innovative methods."

Having worked with Healey in Canada and Australian locations, the curator recognized that sighted people who had experienced the artist's descriptive audio felt it helped them understand dance, which can seem so unclear.

Touching Partnership Of Expert and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular dance piece, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind since birth and who had long assumed that ballet was "primarily for sighted people". But Kikuchi has understood that it in fact "entails a lot of sensation and sentiments" and activates perceptions, "visual and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of earlier losing his way on his way home and using the sun to guide his way back had influenced a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "soothing presence of the sun around Kikuchi as they move together," Malcomson stated.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be shining from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the rays itself, I could feel the temperature … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sun was a good assistant to me. The sunlight could be a good representation. So the narrative developed from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Special Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an academic of disability research at the Toronto university, commented: "Visual impairment and being blind encourages a dynamic bond with motion in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's connection with their body and dance."

In partnering with the performers, the artist was attempting to express what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not available through looking," she noted. "I talk with the dancers to get a sense of how they are in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they think, how their physical form are feeling.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] clothing, illumination, stage design and audio creators, the perceptions and artistry of blindness are ever present as we, blind and seeing people, develop a connection through our passion of motion and performance. It is this creativity and passion that I try to blend into the spoken commentary. It is a collaboration of the senses guided by blindness."

She noted: "Even though the view of the ballet, the beautiful display, is there in front of the viewers, there is much that they overlook or valuing, and it is blindness that is inviting sighted and visually impaired viewers alike into the hidden. What I hope is that, when audience members depart, they feel dance in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the being, and listening to the perceptions of, blindness in new and dynamic ways."

Composer The Composer on Audio Descriptions

Richter, whose works have gathered more than 3.5bn streams, said the descriptive commentary created a connection between visual impairment and sight "via a musical landscape, providing expression to that which does not always appear". He continued: "It is not simply a explanation of a show. It is the art."

International Ballet Event Collaborators

The company's worldwide partners for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will furthermore provide availability to behind-the-scenes video, practice sessions and recently created works – broadcast live via online channels.