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This prestigious ballet company has long provided audio devices with spoken commentary so that blind patrons could follow the action on stage. Now, in a innovative performance, the entire audience will experience such descriptions within a piece that explores how lack of sight can reshape our reactions to sensation, audio and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Creator Collaborates with Famous Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired creator, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, together with other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in creating a recent ballet company production that will premiere on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

Within her creative practice, the artist is driven by a wish to demonstrate how blindness and disability can offer an unique mode of awareness for all people. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, woven with the music, establishes the center of the show on stage.

"Producing exceptional ballet and musical theater for everyone" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's leader, the troupe is concentrating on "complete inclusion – welcoming performers and viewers to encounter ballet in transformative innovative methods," he stated.

Several Choreographers Partner on Fresh Production

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

The curator, the curator of this production, commented: "International Ballet Day was created on the idea of accessibility. Following a decade, we're pushing that idea more to examine how disabled outlooks can influence our art form, and invite audiences of diverse capacities and experiences to discover dance in fresh approaches."

Having worked with the artist in Canada and Australian locations, the curator understood that those with vision who had encountered the artist's audio narration believed it aided them comprehend dance, which can appear so abstract.

Moving Collaboration Between Expert and Non-Professional Dancers

In one performance, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind from childhood and who had always thought that ballet was "mostly for sighted people". But the dancer has realized that it in fact "entails a lot of feeling and feelings" and engages faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of once becoming disoriented on his way home and using the sun to orient his way back had influenced a dance piece in which Dixon represents the "warm breath of the sunlight around his partner as they dance in unison," Malcomson stated.

"This occurred in the afternoon and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be shining from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the rays itself, I could sense the warmth … So I continued moving to the west …. It guided me home. The sun was a good guide to me. The sun could be a good symbol. So the story developed from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Distinct Connection with Motion

Healey, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and lacking sight invites a active relationship with motion in a way that is similar to a expert performer's connection with their physical self and movement."

In working with the performers, the artist was striving to communicate what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she noted. "I speak with the dancers to get a understanding of how they are in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they consider, how their body are feeling.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] clothing, stage lights, set and music designers, the understandings and innovation of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and seeing people, develop a relationship through our affection of movement and performance. It is this creativity and affection that I attempt to integrate into the spoken commentary. It is a collaboration of the senses guided by visual impairment."

She noted: "Even though the view of the dance, the gorgeous display, is available in front of the viewers, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is blindness that is encouraging seeing and visually impaired audience members alike into the hidden. What I desire is that, when patrons depart, they experience ballet in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the presence, and hearing the viewpoints of, blindness in fresh and vibrant ways."

Composer The Composer on Sound Narration

The composer, whose works have amassed more than 3.5bn online plays, said the descriptive commentary established a rapport between visual impairment and vision "via a musical landscape, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He added: "It is not merely a description of a production. It is the performance itself."

International Ballet Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s international collaborators for International Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will furthermore supply entry to exclusive footage, rehearsals and newly commissioned pieces – broadcast in real-time via the event website.