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The Royal Ballet for years made available headphones with audio descriptions so that blind viewers could track the performance on stage. Now, via a innovative new work, the complete gathering will listen to such commentary within a piece that investigates how lack of sight can transform our responses to feeling, sound and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Artist Collaborates with Renowned Choreographers

The blind artist, a blind professional, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and composer the celebrated composer in creating a new ballet company commission that will debut on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

Within her creative practice, the artist is guided by a wish to show how visual impairment and physical challenge can provide an different type of perception for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, woven with the score, forms the heart of the show on stage.

"Creating exceptional dance and musical theater for everyone" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's leader, the organization is zeroing in on "complete inclusion – encouraging creators and patrons to experience dance in life-changing new ways," he said.

Multiple Choreographers Work on New Work

The fresh production is being created by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, all partnering with the blind artist.

The curator, the director of this work, commented: "International Ballet Day was established on the principle of access. Following a ten years, we're expanding that concept further to explore how impaired perspectives can mold our art form, and encourage patrons of all abilities and experiences to experience dance in fresh approaches."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canada and Australia, he realized that sighted people who had heard the artist's spoken descriptions felt it helped them comprehend dance, which can seem so abstract.

Inspiring Partnership Of Expert and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular performance, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired since birth and who had previously believed that dance was "mostly for sighted people". But the dancer has discovered that it in fact "includes a lot of sensation and sentiments" and taps into senses, "visual and non-sight".

The dancer's individual experience of earlier losing his way on his way home and depending on the sun to direct his way back had influenced a dance piece in which Dixon represents the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they move together," the choreographer explained.

"This occurred in the afternoon and I had a intuition that the sun should be beaming from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could feel the temperature … So I continued moving to the west …. It directed me home. The sun was a good guide to me. The sun could be a powerful symbol. So the story developed from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Special Connection with Dance

Healey, an scholar of disability studies at the University of Toronto, said: "Visual impairment and being blind fosters a vibrant relationship with dance in a way that is similar to a expert performer's relationship with their body and motion."

In partnering with the performers, the artist was seeking to communicate what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not available through sight," she explained. "I talk with the performers to get a sense of how they feel in their physical self, where their breath is, what they think, how their body are experiencing.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] clothing, stage lights, set and sound creators, the viewpoints and creativity of visual impairment are ever present as we, blind and seeing people, develop a relationship through our love of dance and performance. It is this artistry and passion that I try to weave into the detailed narration. It is a cooperation of the senses led by blindness."

She noted: "Even though the sight of the ballet, the stunning spectacle, is there facing the viewers, there is much that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is inviting sighted and visually impaired patrons alike into the unseen. What I wish is that, when audience members exit, they feel dance in a new way, and they’re also experiencing the existence, and hearing the perceptions of, blindness in new and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Narration

Richter, whose works have gathered more than 3.5 billion online plays, said the audio descriptions established a relationship between visual impairment and sight "through a audio environment, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He noted: "This isn't simply a explanation of a production. It is the art."

World Ballet Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s international associates for World Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will also provide entry to exclusive material, rehearsals and recently created pieces – streamed live via online channels.