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This prestigious ballet company has long made available audio devices with descriptive narration so that blind patrons could follow the action on stage. Now, via a revolutionary performance, the complete crowd will listen to such narration within a piece that investigates how lack of sight can transform our responses to feeling, audio and dramatic expression.

Blind Creator Collaborates with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired creator, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, together with other dance creators, and musician Max Richter in developing a fresh Royal Ballet production that will premiere on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed this week.

Within her creative practice, Healey is motivated by a ambition to demonstrate how visual impairment and disability can present an different form of understanding for everyone. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the music, forms the core of the performance on stage.

"Producing exceptional dance and musical theater for each person" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's leader, the troupe is concentrating on "radical accessibility – inviting artists and audiences to discover ballet in life-changing innovative methods," he explained.

Several Dance Creators Partner on New Production

The new work is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, all collaborating with the blind artist.

The curator, the curator of this production, stated: "International Ballet Day was established on the concept of access. Following a decade, we're expanding that concept deeper to consider how disabled viewpoints can shape our performance style, and encourage patrons of diverse capacities and experiences to discover dance in fresh approaches."

Having worked with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he understood that those with vision who had experienced the artist's descriptive audio found it helped them comprehend ballet, which can appear so abstract.

Inspiring Collaboration Of Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular performance, the company's performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless from birth and who had previously believed that dance was "mainly for sighted people". But Kikuchi has understood that it in fact "entails a lot of sensation and feelings" and taps into faculties, "sight-based and non-sight".

The dancer's unique narrative of previously losing his way on his way home and relying on the sunlight to orient his way back had influenced a dance piece in which Dixon embodies the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they perform as one," the choreographer said.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sun should be shining from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I didn't perceive the sunlight itself, I could sense the warmth … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sunshine was a great guide to me. The sun could be a good metaphor. So the tale originated from there."

Blindness Offers Special Relationship with Movement

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the Toronto university, said: "Blindness and being blind invites a dynamic bond with motion in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s relationship with their body and dance."

In partnering with the performers, the artist was striving to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not available through vision," she explained. "I converse with the performers to get a sense of how they feel in their body, where their respiration is, what they consider, how their physical form are sensing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, stage lights, stage design and music artists, the understandings and artistry of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and sighted persons, develop a relationship through our affection of motion and dance. It is this artistry and love that I try to blend into the detailed narration. It is a cooperation of the perceptions guided by blindness."

She continued: "Although the sight of the dance, the beautiful visual feast, is there in front of the viewers, there is much that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is blindness that is inviting sighted and visually impaired patrons alike into the hidden. What I hope is that, when viewers exit, they experience ballet in a different way, and they’re also feeling the being, and perceiving the viewpoints of, visual impairment in fresh and active ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Narration

The composer, whose compositions have gathered more than billions of online plays, stated the audio descriptions created a relationship between blindness and vision "through a audio environment, providing expression to that which remains unseen". He added: "It is not simply a narration of a performance. It is the art."

World Dance Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide associates for World Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The companies will also supply entry to behind-the-scenes material, practice sessions and recently created works – transmitted live via the event website.