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The Royal Ballet for years offered headphones with descriptive narration so that sightless patrons could follow the action on stage. Now, in a groundbreaking performance, the entire gathering will experience such commentary within a production that examines how visual impairment can transform our perceptions to sensation, music and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Artist Partners with Renowned Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired professional, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in producing a recent Royal Ballet commission that will premiere on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed this week.

In her art, the artist is motivated by a wish to illustrate how blindness and physical challenge can offer an alternative form of awareness for everyone. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the score, establishes the center of the show on stage.

"Producing world-class ballet and opera for each person" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's leader, the organization is focusing on "total access – inviting performers and patrons to encounter dance in transformative new ways," he stated.

Several Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Production

The recent commission is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, all working with Healey.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this production, commented: "World Ballet Day was established on the principle of accessibility. After a ten years, we're extending that concept deeper to consider how impaired outlooks can shape our art form, and invite audiences of every capability and histories to experience dance in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canada and Australia, he understood that individuals who can see who had experienced the artist's audio narration felt it assisted them understand ballet, which can appear so abstract.

Moving Collaboration Of Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired since birth and who had always thought that ballet was "mainly for those who can see". But Kikuchi has understood that it in fact "entails a lot of sensation and sentiments" and activates faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of once getting lost on his way home and relying on the sun to guide his way back had inspired a duet in which Dixon becomes the "warm breath of the sunlight around his partner as they move together," the choreographer explained.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a intuition 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 heat … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sun was a excellent assistant to me. The sunlight could be a powerful symbol. So the tale originated from there."

Blindness Provides Distinct Connection with Movement

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the University of Toronto, said: "Visual impairment and lacking sight fosters a dynamic bond with movement in a way that is like a expert performer's bond with their physical self and movement."

In collaborating with the performers, she was attempting to convey what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she said. "I converse with the dancers to get a sense of how they are in their body, where their breathing is, what they think, how their physical form are feeling.

"Partnering with the choreographers [and] clothing, illumination, scenery and music artists, the viewpoints and creativity of visual impairment are always there as we, blind and seeing individuals, establish a relationship through our affection of movement and performance. It is this innovation and affection that I attempt to integrate into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a partnership of the faculties guided by blindness."

She added: "Even though the vision of the performance, the gorgeous visual feast, is present in front of the patrons, there is so much that they’re not accessing or understanding, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging seeing and blind viewers alike into the unseen. What I hope is that, when viewers exit, they sense performance in a new way, and they’re also experiencing the being, and hearing the perceptions of, visual impairment in fresh and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose compositions have amassed more than 3.5bn streams, said the descriptive commentary formed a rapport between visual impairment and sight "through a audio environment, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He added: "It is not simply a description of a production. This is performance."

International Ballet Event Collaborators

The company's international associates for World Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will also provide entry to exclusive material, practice sessions and freshly produced productions – broadcast live via the event website.