🔗 Share this article

This prestigious ballet company for years offered headphones with spoken commentary so that visually impaired patrons could follow the movement on stage. Now, through a innovative performance, the entire gathering will hear such descriptions within a production that examines how blindness can transform our perceptions to sensation, sound and storytelling.

Blind Artist Collaborates with Famous Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind creator, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a new ballet company production that will launch on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

Through her work, Healey is driven by a ambition to show how visual impairment and disability can provide an alternative form of perception for all people. Her detailed audio narration, integrated with the music, establishes the heart of the performance on stage.

"Producing world-class dance and opera for all" is a motto of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the company is zeroing in on "radical accessibility – encouraging creators and viewers to discover ballet in life-changing new ways," he explained.

Multiple Choreographers Work on Fresh Work

The recent commission is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to McGregor, each partnering with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this production, stated: "International Ballet Day was created on the principle of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're expanding that notion deeper to examine how impaired perspectives can influence our art form, and welcome audiences of diverse capacities and backgrounds to discover ballet in new ways."

After collaborating with Healey in Canada and Australia, the curator realized that individuals who can see who had heard the artist's spoken descriptions found it helped them understand dance, which can appear so unclear.

Moving Partnership Of Professional and Non-Professional Dancers

In one dance piece, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind from birth and who had always thought that dance was "mostly for those who can see". But the dancer has realized that it in fact "involves a lot of feeling and feelings" and activates senses, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of previously losing his way on his way home and using the sun to direct his way back had motivated a performance in which the professional dancer embodies the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," Malcomson stated.

"This occurred during the day and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be radiating from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the sunlight itself, I could sense the temperature … So I continued moving to the west …. It directed me home. The sun was a great guide to me. The sunlight could be a good symbol. So the narrative originated from there."

Blindness Offers Special Relationship with Motion

The blind artist, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and being blind fosters a vibrant connection with movement in a way that is like a professional dancer’s relationship with their physical self and dance."

In partnering with the performers, the artist was striving to communicate what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she explained. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they’re thinking, how their muscles are experiencing.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] clothing, stage lights, stage design and sound creators, the understandings and creativity of blindness are always there as we, visually impaired and seeing people, establish a rapport through our affection of motion and dance. It is this innovation and affection that I try to blend into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a cooperation of the faculties guided by visual impairment."

She noted: "Even though the vision of the ballet, the beautiful spectacle, is present facing the patrons, there is much that they overlook or understanding, and it is blindness that is inviting seeing and visually impaired audience members alike into the unseen. What I hope is that, when viewers leave, they experience dance in a distinct way, and they’re also sensing the existence, and listening to the understandings of, visual impairment in innovative and active ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Narration

Richter, whose compositions have amassed more than 3.5bn digital listens, said the descriptive commentary established a connection between blindness and sight "through a musical landscape, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He continued: "It is not simply a description of a performance. It is performance."

International Ballet Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide partners for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will additionally offer entry to behind-the-scenes video, practice sessions and freshly produced pieces – transmitted in real-time via the event website.