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This prestigious ballet company traditionally made available audio devices with descriptive narration so that sightless viewers could follow the movement on stage. Now, through a innovative performance, the whole gathering will listen to such narration within a piece that investigates how visual impairment can redefine our responses to feeling, sound and storytelling.

Blind Artist Works with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind creator, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and composer Max Richter in producing a new Royal Ballet commission that will launch on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

Within her creative practice, Healey is driven by a wish to illustrate how blindness and physical challenge can present an alternative type of perception for all people. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the score, creates the center of the performance on stage.

"Creating exceptional dance and opera for each person" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's leader, the company is zeroing in on "total access – encouraging performers and patrons to encounter ballet in revolutionary new ways," he said.

Various Dance Creators Partner on New Work

The fresh production is being created by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, each collaborating with the blind artist.

The curator, the organizer of this production, said: "World Ballet Day was created on the principle of accessibility. After a ten years, we're pushing that concept further to explore how disabled outlooks can mold our performance style, and encourage viewers of diverse capacities and histories to encounter dance in innovative methods."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, he recognized that individuals who can see who had encountered Healey’s spoken descriptions felt it helped them comprehend ballet, which can look so abstract.

Moving Partnership Between Expert and Amateur Performers

In a particular duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless since birth and who had always thought that dance was "mainly for those who can see". But Kikuchi has understood that it in fact "includes a lot of feeling and sentiments" and engages senses, "sight-based and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of once getting lost on his way home and using the sun to direct his way back had inspired a duet in which Dixon represents the "warm breath of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," the choreographer said.

"This occurred during the day and I had a sense that the sunlight should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the sunlight itself, I could perceive the temperature … So I persisted in walking to the west …. It led me home. The sunshine was a good helper to me. The sun could be a powerful metaphor. So the story developed from there."

Blindness Presents Distinct Relationship with Movement

Healey, an scholar of disability studies at the University of Toronto, commented: "Visual impairment and lacking sight invites a active relationship with dance in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's connection with their body and motion."

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

"Working together with the choreographers [and] costume, stage lights, stage design and sound artists, the viewpoints and artistry of visual impairment are constantly visible as we, blind and seeing persons, build a relationship through our passion of dance and dance. It is this creativity and love that I strive to blend into the spoken commentary. It is a partnership of the perceptions guided by blindness."

She added: "Even though the view of the performance, the stunning spectacle, is available before the viewers, there is so much that they miss or understanding, and it is blindness that is encouraging sighted and visually impaired audience members both into the hidden. What I hope is that, when viewers leave, they experience dance in a distinct way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and listening to the perceptions of, visual impairment in innovative and vibrant ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Narration

The composer, whose works have amassed more than 3.5bn streams, stated the descriptive commentary formed a relationship between blindness and vision "by means of a audio environment, providing expression to that which does not always appear". He added: "It is not just a explanation of a performance. This is the art."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The company's worldwide partners for International Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The companies will also provide access to exclusive video, rehearsals and freshly produced works – transmitted live via online channels.