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The Royal Ballet traditionally provided audio devices with descriptive narration so that visually impaired patrons could understand the movement on stage. Now, in a revolutionary performance, the complete crowd will listen to such narration within a piece that examines how lack of sight can redefine our perceptions to sensation, music and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Artist Works with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind artist, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, together with other dance creators, and composer the celebrated composer in producing a fresh ballet company work that will debut on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as declared on Thursday.

In her art, the artist is driven by a desire to show how blindness and physical challenge can offer an alternative form of perception for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the composition, forms the core of the performance on stage.

"Producing world-class dance and musical theater for all" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's director, the company is concentrating on "complete inclusion – encouraging performers and audiences to experience dance in transformative innovative methods," he said.

Multiple Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Performance

The new work is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, all working with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this production, commented: "World Ballet Day was founded on the principle of inclusion. After a decade, we're pushing that notion deeper to consider how disabled outlooks can shape our creative medium, and invite audiences of diverse capacities and experiences to encounter dance in new ways."

After collaborating with the artist in Canada and Australian locations, he understood that sighted people who had heard Healey’s spoken descriptions found it assisted them grasp ballet, which can appear so unclear.

Touching Partnership Between Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular performance, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless since birth and who had always thought that ballet was "primarily for individuals with vision". But the dancer has discovered that it in fact "involves a lot of feeling and emotions" and activates perceptions, "sight-based and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of previously getting lost on his way home and relying on the sunlight to direct his way back had inspired a performance in which the professional dancer embodies the "soothing presence of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred in the afternoon and I had a sense that the sunlight should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could sense the heat … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sunshine was a excellent guide to me. The sun could be a powerful representation. So the narrative emerged from there."

Blindness Provides Distinct Relationship with Movement

The blind artist, an scholar of disability studies at the University of Toronto, stated: "Visual impairment and being blind invites a active relationship with dance in a way that is like a expert performer's connection with their physical self and movement."

In working with the performers, she was striving to convey what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not available through sight," she explained. "I converse with the performers to get a sense of how they are in their physical self, where their breath is, what they’re thinking, how their muscles are feeling.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, lighting, set and music designers, the understandings and artistry of blindness are always there as we, blind and seeing persons, build a connection through our affection of movement and dance. It is this innovation and love that I try to integrate into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a collaboration of the perceptions guided by visual impairment."

She noted: "Even though the sight of the ballet, the gorgeous spectacle, is available facing the audience, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is inviting sighted and blind audience members alike into the hidden. What I wish is that, when viewers exit, they sense ballet in a different way, and they’re also feeling the being, and listening to the perceptions of, visual impairment in innovative and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose works have gathered more than 3.5 billion digital listens, commented the descriptive commentary formed a relationship between blindness and vision "by means of a soundscape, providing expression to that which remains unseen". He continued: "It is not simply a narration of a show. It is the performance itself."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The company's global associates for International Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The companies will additionally offer entry to backstage footage, rehearsals and recently created pieces – streamed as it happens via the event website.