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The Royal Ballet has long offered headphones with spoken commentary so that sightless viewers could follow the movement on stage. Presently, through a innovative performance, the entire crowd will hear such commentary within a piece that explores how lack of sight can redefine our responses to experience, music and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Creator Partners with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind professional, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and composer Max Richter in producing a new Royal Ballet commission that will launch on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as declared on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, the artist is guided by a wish to show how visual impairment and disability can present an unique type of awareness for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, woven with the music, establishes the core of the production on stage.

"Making world-class ballet and musical theater for each person" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is zeroing in on "total access – encouraging artists and viewers to discover ballet in transformative innovative methods," he said.

Multiple Choreographers Collaborate on New Work

The fresh production is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as McGregor, each working with the blind artist.

The curator, the director of this commission, commented: "International Ballet Day was created on the idea of access. Following a ten years, we're extending that concept further to consider how impaired perspectives can influence our performance style, and welcome patrons of all abilities and backgrounds to encounter dance in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canadian venues and Australia, he understood that sighted people who had encountered Healey’s descriptive audio found it helped them grasp ballet, which can look so unclear.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Expert and Amateur Dancers

In one dance piece, the company's performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless from birth and who had long assumed that dance was "mainly for individuals with vision". But the dancer has understood that it in fact "involves a lot of sensation and sentiments" and activates faculties, "visual and non-visual".

The dancer's personal story of once becoming disoriented on his way home and depending on the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a duet in which the professional dancer becomes the "warm breath of the sun around his partner as they dance in unison," the choreographer stated.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be radiating from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the rays itself, I could perceive the warmth … So I continued moving to the west …. It guided me home. The sunshine was a great guide to me. The sunlight could be a powerful symbol. So the tale developed from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Special Connection with Dance

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the Toronto university, stated: "Blindness and lacking sight encourages a vibrant bond with dance in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s bond with their physical self and movement."

In working with the dancers, the artist was attempting to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she said. "I converse with the dancers to get a understanding of how they’re feeling in their body, where their breath is, what they think, how their body are feeling.

"Partnering with the choreographers [and] clothing, illumination, stage design and music creators, the perceptions and artistry of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted people, develop a connection through our affection of movement and performance. It is this innovation and passion that I strive to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a partnership of the senses guided by blindness."

She continued: "While the vision of the dance, the gorgeous spectacle, is available in front of the viewers, there is much that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming seeing and visually impaired patrons alike into the invisible. What I desire is that, when patrons exit, they sense ballet in a new way, and they’re also sensing the existence, and listening to the understandings of, blindness in fresh and vibrant ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

Richter, whose recordings have amassed more than 3.5 billion streams, commented the audio descriptions established a connection between blindness and vision "by means of a audio environment, giving voice to that which remains unseen". He continued: "It is not merely a narration of a production. It is performance."

World Ballet Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global collaborators for World Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The companies will also offer availability to behind-the-scenes footage, preparations and recently created works – streamed as it happens via the event website.