An Partnership of Our Senses: Royal Ballet Partners alongside Visually Impaired Creator for Groundbreaking New Performance

The Royal Ballet traditionally offered audio devices with spoken commentary so that visually impaired audience members could understand the action on stage. Currently, through a revolutionary new work, the entire gathering will experience such commentary within a piece that explores how visual impairment can transform our perceptions to feeling, audio and storytelling.

Blind Creator Partners with Renowned Choreographers

Devon Healey, a visually impaired creator, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a recent Royal Ballet commission that will debut on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as declared this week.

In her art, the artist is guided by a wish to show how visual impairment and physical challenge can present an unique form of awareness for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the music, creates the center of the show on stage.

"Producing top-tier ballet and opera for each person" is a motto of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is focusing on "radical accessibility – inviting creators and audiences to discover ballet in revolutionary new ways," he stated.

Various Choreographers Work on Fresh Performance

The fresh production is being created by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, all working with Healey.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this production, stated: "World Ballet Day was created on the principle of access. After a decade, we're extending that concept more to examine how impaired viewpoints can influence our creative medium, and invite audiences of every capability and histories to discover dance in fresh approaches."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canadian venues and Australia, he realized that individuals who can see who had experienced Healey’s spoken descriptions believed it aided them comprehend dance, which can seem so abstract.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Professional and Non-Professional Dancers

In a particular duet, 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 individuals with vision". But Kikuchi has discovered that it in fact "entails a lot of sensation and emotions" and activates senses, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of once getting lost on his way home and depending on the sun to direct his way back had inspired a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "warm breath of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they perform as one," the choreographer stated.

"It was in the afternoon and I had a feeling that the sun should be beaming from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the rays itself, I could perceive the heat … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a good guide to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful symbol. So the story developed from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Distinct Relationship with Dance

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability research at the University of Toronto, stated: "Visual impairment and being blind invites a dynamic relationship with motion in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s bond with their physical self and motion."

In collaborating with the dancers, she was striving to convey what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not available through sight," she said. "I talk with the dancers to get a sense of how they feel in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they consider, how their muscles are sensing.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] clothing, illumination, scenery and music artists, the perceptions and creativity of blindness are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted individuals, build a connection through our affection of motion and dance. It is this artistry and passion that I try to weave into the detailed narration. It is a collaboration of the senses directed by blindness."

The artist added: "While the sight of the performance, the beautiful display, is present facing the patrons, there is so much that they overlook or understanding, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging seeing and visually impaired audience members equally into the invisible. What I desire is that, when viewers exit, they sense performance in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the existence, and perceiving the understandings of, blindness in innovative and active ways."

Musician Max Richter on Sound Narration

The composer, whose works have accumulated more than billions of streams, commented the spoken narration created a rapport between visual impairment and vision "via a musical landscape, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He continued: "It is not just a description of a performance. This is performance."

World Ballet Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s international associates for International Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The companies will also provide entry to behind-the-scenes video, rehearsals and newly commissioned pieces – transmitted in real-time via the event website.