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This prestigious ballet company traditionally made available headphones with spoken commentary so that sightless viewers could track the performance on stage. Now, via a groundbreaking new work, the whole audience will experience such narration within a piece that explores how visual impairment can redefine our perceptions to feeling, music and dramatic expression.

Blind Artist Collaborates with Celebrated Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired artist, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, together with other dance creators, and composer the celebrated composer in producing a recent Royal Ballet production that will debut on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed this week.

Within her creative practice, the artist is motivated by a ambition to demonstrate how visual impairment and disability can present an different mode of perception for each individual. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the score, creates the heart of the production on stage.

"Producing top-tier ballet and opera for everyone" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under the director, the company's leader, the organization is concentrating on "radical accessibility – inviting creators and patrons to discover dance in revolutionary innovative methods," he said.

Several Choreographers Partner on Fresh Work

The new work is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, each collaborating with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this work, stated: "World Ballet Day was founded on the idea of inclusion. Following a decade, we're expanding that idea further to consider how challenged perspectives can mold our art form, and encourage audiences of every capability and backgrounds to discover dance in innovative methods."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he understood that those with vision who had experienced the artist's descriptive audio found it helped them comprehend dance, which can seem so complex.

Inspiring Collaboration Of Professional and Amateur Dancers

In a particular duet, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless from childhood and who had long assumed that dance was "primarily for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it actually "involves a lot of sensation and sentiments" and activates senses, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s personal story of previously becoming disoriented on his way home and depending on the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a dance piece in which Dixon represents the "soothing presence of the sun around his partner as they perform as one," Malcomson stated.

"This occurred during the day and I had a intuition that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the rays itself, I could feel the heat … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a great assistant to me. The sun could be a powerful symbol. So the tale emerged from there."

Blindness Offers Distinct Relationship with Motion

The blind artist, an academic of disability research at the Toronto university, commented: "Blindness and being blind fosters a dynamic bond with motion in a way that is like a expert performer's connection with their body and motion."

In collaborating with the performers, she was striving to express what "they feel in their body, something that’s just not available through looking," she noted. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they consider, how their muscles are sensing.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] costume, illumination, scenery and music designers, the understandings and artistry of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and seeing persons, develop a connection through our passion of dance and performance. It is this artistry and passion that I try to weave into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the senses led by visual impairment."

The artist added: "While the vision of the dance, the beautiful spectacle, is there facing the audience, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or understanding, and it is blindness that is encouraging seeing and visually impaired viewers alike into the hidden. What I hope is that, when viewers leave, they sense performance in a different way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and perceiving the viewpoints of, visual impairment in fresh and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose works have accumulated more than 3.5 billion digital listens, stated the spoken narration formed a rapport between visual impairment and vision "through a audio environment, offering narration to that which is not always visible". He continued: "This isn't simply a explanation of a show. This is the performance itself."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The company's global associates for World Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will also provide availability to behind-the-scenes video, rehearsals and newly commissioned works – streamed as it happens via the event website.