A Cooperation of the Senses: The Royal Ballet Teams Up with Visually Impaired Creator for Pioneering New Show

The Royal Ballet has long offered audio devices with audio descriptions so that sightless audience members could track the performance on stage. Now, via a revolutionary production, the whole crowd will listen to such descriptions within a production that investigates how blindness can redefine our responses to sensation, music and dramatic expression.

Blind Artist Collaborates with Celebrated Choreographers

Devon Healey, a blind professional, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in producing a fresh Royal Ballet production that will debut on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

In her art, Healey is driven by a ambition to show how blindness and physical challenge can offer an unique mode of perception for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, integrated with the composition, creates the heart of the show on stage.

"Creating world-class ballet and opera for each person" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the organization is concentrating on "total access – welcoming creators and patrons to experience ballet in revolutionary innovative methods," he explained.

Multiple Dance Creators Work on Fresh Work

The fresh production is being created by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, every one working with Healey.

The curator, the director of this commission, stated: "International Ballet Day was established on the principle of access. After a decade, we're extending that concept further to examine how impaired outlooks can mold our performance style, and encourage audiences of every capability and backgrounds to experience dance in new ways."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canada and Australia, the curator understood that individuals who can see who had heard Healey’s audio narration found it aided them comprehend dance, which can seem so abstract.

Moving Collaboration Between Expert and Amateur Dancers

In one dance piece, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind from birth and who had previously believed that ballet was "primarily for sighted people". But Kikuchi has discovered that it actually "entails a lot of sensation and sentiments" and activates faculties, "sight-based and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of earlier getting lost on his way home and depending on the sunlight to guide his way back had motivated a duet in which the professional dancer embodies the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they perform as one," Malcomson said.

"It was during the day and I had a sense that the sunlight should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the sunlight itself, I could feel the warmth … So I kept walking to the west …. It led me home. The sun was a great guide to me. The sun could be a good representation. So the narrative originated from there."

Blindness Presents Special Connection with Movement

Healey, an assistant professor of disability studies at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and lacking sight fosters a active connection with movement in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s relationship with their physical self and movement."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was striving to communicate what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she said. "I speak with the performers to get a sense of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they think, how their body are feeling.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] costume, stage lights, stage design and music designers, the viewpoints and creativity of blindness are ever present as we, blind and sighted individuals, establish a connection through our love of movement and performance. It is this innovation and love that I attempt to weave into the detailed narration. It is a cooperation of the perceptions led by visual impairment."

She noted: "While the sight of the dance, the beautiful visual feast, is there in front of the patrons, there is so much that they overlook or valuing, and it is blindness that is welcoming sighted and blind audience members both into the unseen. What I hope is that, when patrons exit, they experience ballet in a distinct way, and they’re also feeling the being, and perceiving the viewpoints of, visual impairment in innovative and vibrant ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Narration

The composer, whose compositions have amassed more than 3.5 billion digital listens, stated the spoken narration established a relationship between visual impairment and sight "via a soundscape, providing expression to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not merely a description of a show. This is the performance itself."

International Ballet Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s international associates for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will also provide entry to backstage video, practice sessions and recently created productions – broadcast as it happens via the event website.