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This prestigious ballet company traditionally offered audio devices with spoken commentary so that visually impaired audience members could follow the movement on stage. Now, in a groundbreaking production, the entire crowd will hear such descriptions within a piece that examines how lack of sight can transform our perceptions to experience, music and narrative.

Blind Creator Partners with Renowned Choreographers

The blind artist, a blind artist, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in developing a new ballet company work that will premiere on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

Through her work, the artist is driven by a wish to show how visual impairment and physical challenge can provide an different type of perception for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, integrated with the music, creates the heart of the performance on stage.

"Creating top-tier dance and musical theater for all" is a motto of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the organization is zeroing in on "complete inclusion – encouraging artists and audiences to encounter dance in transformative fresh approaches," he stated.

Several Dance Creators Collaborate on Fresh Work

The recent commission is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, every one collaborating with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the curator of this commission, said: "World Ballet Day was established on the idea of accessibility. After a ten years, we're pushing that concept more to explore how challenged perspectives can mold our performance style, and encourage audiences of every capability and backgrounds to encounter ballet in new ways."

After collaborating with the artist in Canada and Australian locations, he realized that sighted people who had heard the artist's descriptive audio felt it assisted them understand dance, which can seem so unclear.

Inspiring Partnership Between Expert and Non-Professional Dancers

In one dance piece, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless from childhood and who had always thought that dance was "mainly for those who can see". But Kikuchi has realized that it in fact "involves a lot of sensation and sentiments" and engages perceptions, "sight-based and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of earlier getting lost on his way home and using the sun to guide his way back had inspired a dance piece in which the professional dancer becomes the "soothing presence of the sun around his partner as they perform as one," the choreographer explained.

"This occurred in the afternoon and I had a sense that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the light itself, I could sense the heat … So I continued moving to the west …. It guided me home. The sun was a great helper to me. The sunlight could be a powerful representation. So the story developed from there."

Blindness Offers Distinct Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability studies at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and being blind invites a dynamic relationship with motion in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's connection with their physical self and motion."

In collaborating with the performers, she 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 feeling of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they’re thinking, how their body are experiencing.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] costume, lighting, set and music artists, the viewpoints and artistry of blindness are always there as we, blind and seeing people, establish a relationship through our love of dance and dance. It is this innovation and affection that I attempt to integrate into the spoken commentary. It is a cooperation of the perceptions led by visual impairment."

The artist added: "Even though the vision of the performance, the beautiful visual feast, is there before the viewers, there is a great deal that they overlook or appreciating, and it is blindness that is encouraging seeing and blind patrons both into the hidden. What I hope is that, when audience members depart, they experience dance in a distinct way, and they’re also feeling the being, and listening to the viewpoints of, visual impairment in new and dynamic ways."

Composer The Composer on Sound Descriptions

The composer, whose recordings have accumulated more than billions of digital listens, stated the descriptive commentary established a rapport between visual impairment and sight "by means of a musical landscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He continued: "It is not simply a explanation of a performance. It is the performance itself."

International Dance Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide partners for International Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The companies will also offer access to exclusive video, rehearsals and newly commissioned productions – broadcast as it happens via online channels.