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This prestigious ballet company traditionally provided headphones with audio descriptions so that blind patrons could track the performance on stage. Presently, via a groundbreaking performance, the whole crowd will listen to such narration within a work that explores how lack of sight can redefine our reactions to experience, music and storytelling.

Blind Artist Works with Celebrated Choreographers

Devon Healey, a blind creator, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, together with other choreographers, and composer Max Richter in producing a fresh Royal Ballet work that will launch on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed this week.

In her art, the artist is guided by a wish to demonstrate how blindness and physical challenge can provide an alternative mode of understanding for each individual. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the music, creates the heart of the production on stage.

"Producing top-tier ballet and opera for each person" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's leader, the troupe is focusing on "total access – welcoming creators and audiences to encounter ballet in life-changing new ways," he stated.

Several Dance Creators Collaborate on Fresh Work

The new work is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, each partnering with Healey.

Robert Binet, the director of this work, said: "World Ballet Day was established on the idea of inclusion. Following a decade, we're extending that concept further to examine how disabled viewpoints can mold our performance style, and invite viewers of all abilities and backgrounds to experience ballet in new ways."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canada and Australian locations, he recognized that individuals who can see who had encountered Healey’s spoken descriptions felt it aided them understand ballet, which can appear so complex.

Touching Collaboration Between Expert and Amateur Dancers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired since birth and who had always thought that dance was "mainly for sighted people". But the dancer has discovered that it actually "involves a lot of emotion and emotions" and engages senses, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's unique narrative of once becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sun to orient his way back had influenced a duet in which Dixon becomes the "warm breath of the sun around his partner as they move together," the choreographer said.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be shining from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the rays itself, I could feel the warmth … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sunshine was a great guide to me. The sun could be a meaningful metaphor. So the narrative originated from there."

Blindness Provides Distinct Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an academic of disability research at the University of Toronto, commented: "Visual impairment and lacking sight encourages a dynamic connection with dance in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s connection with their body and movement."

In working with the performers, she was striving to express what "they feel in their body, something that’s just not available through looking," she explained. "I converse with the dancers to get a understanding of how they feel in their body, where their breathing is, what they think, how their body are sensing.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] attire, stage lights, stage design and audio designers, the perceptions and creativity of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and seeing persons, establish a relationship through our love of dance and performance. It is this innovation and passion that I attempt to integrate into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a cooperation of the faculties guided by blindness."

She added: "Although the vision of the performance, the beautiful display, is present facing the viewers, there is so much that they’re not accessing or understanding, and it is blindness that is welcoming seeing and blind viewers both into the unseen. What I hope is that, when audience members leave, they sense ballet in a new way, and they’re also sensing the existence, and perceiving the perceptions of, visual impairment in innovative and dynamic ways."

Composer The Composer on Audio Narration

Richter, whose works have gathered more than 3.5bn digital listens, said the descriptive commentary created a rapport between visual impairment and vision "through a soundscape, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He added: "This isn't just a explanation of a production. This is performance."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s international associates for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The companies will furthermore supply entry to exclusive video, rehearsals and freshly produced pieces – broadcast live via online channels.