🔗 Share this article

This prestigious ballet company for years provided headphones with audio descriptions so that blind viewers could track the performance on stage. Presently, through a groundbreaking new work, the entire crowd will listen to such commentary within a piece that explores how visual impairment can transform our perceptions to sensation, sound and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Artist Collaborates with Famous Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired artist, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in producing a recent ballet company production that will debut on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

In her art, the artist is motivated by a desire to illustrate how blindness and physical challenge can provide an alternative mode of awareness for each individual. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, blended with the music, creates the heart of the performance on stage.

"Making exceptional ballet and opera for each person" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the company is concentrating on "complete inclusion – inviting artists and viewers to discover ballet in life-changing new ways," he explained.

Various Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Performance

The fresh production is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to McGregor, all partnering with Healey.

Robert Binet, the curator of this commission, stated: "International Ballet Day was founded on the principle of access. After a decade, we're extending that idea deeper to examine how impaired outlooks can shape our art form, and welcome patrons of diverse capacities and backgrounds to experience ballet in new ways."

After collaborating with Healey in Canada and Australian locations, the curator recognized that those with vision who had encountered Healey’s spoken descriptions found it helped them comprehend ballet, which can appear so complex.

Moving Collaboration Between Professional and Amateur Performers

In a particular duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless since birth and who had previously believed that dance was "mostly for sighted people". But the dancer has realized that it truly "involves a lot of emotion and sentiments" and activates faculties, "visual and non-visual".

The dancer's unique narrative of once losing his way on his way home and relying on the sun to direct his way back had inspired a duet in which the professional dancer becomes the "gentle warmth of the sun around his partner as they perform as one," the choreographer stated.

"This occurred in the afternoon and I had a sense that the sun should be beaming from the west. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I couldn't see the light itself, I could perceive the heat … So I persisted in walking to the west …. It guided me home. The sunshine was a excellent assistant to me. The sunlight could be a good symbol. So the narrative originated from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Distinct Connection with Dance

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and lacking sight fosters a active relationship with dance in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s bond with their body and movement."

In partnering with the dancers, she was seeking to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she said. "I converse with the dancers to get a understanding of how they are in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they think, how their muscles are sensing.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] clothing, stage lights, set and audio artists, the perceptions and innovation of visual impairment are constantly visible as we, blind and seeing people, build a relationship through our affection of motion and performance. It is this creativity and love that I try to blend into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the senses guided by blindness."

She added: "Even though the vision of the dance, the gorgeous display, is present in front of the audience, there is much that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming seeing and visually impaired audience members equally into the hidden. What I wish is that, when patrons depart, they sense performance in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the existence, and listening to the viewpoints of, blindness in fresh and dynamic ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Narration

Richter, whose recordings have amassed more than billions of online plays, commented the audio descriptions formed a connection between blindness and sight "via a soundscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He added: "It is not merely a narration of a show. It is the performance itself."

International Ballet Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global collaborators for International Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will furthermore supply availability to behind-the-scenes material, preparations and recently created pieces – broadcast in real-time via online channels.