🔗 Share this article

The Royal Ballet traditionally provided headphones with audio descriptions so that sightless viewers could follow the movement on stage. Now, via a groundbreaking new work, the whole gathering will listen to such descriptions within a piece that explores how blindness can reshape our reactions to experience, music and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Artist Collaborates with Famous Dance Creators

The blind artist, a blind artist, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and musician Max Richter in creating a new ballet company production that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as announced recently.

Through her work, the artist is driven by a desire to show how visual impairment and physical challenge can offer an unique type of perception for each individual. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, blended with the composition, creates the heart of the performance on stage.

"Making top-tier ballet and musical theater for each person" is a motto of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's leader, the company is concentrating on "complete inclusion – encouraging performers and patrons to encounter ballet in life-changing innovative methods," he stated.

Several Choreographers Partner on New Performance

The new work is being created by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as McGregor, every one partnering with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the director of this commission, said: "World Ballet Day was established on the concept of inclusion. After a decade, we're pushing that concept further to consider how impaired outlooks can shape our performance style, and encourage audiences of diverse capacities and experiences to encounter dance in new ways."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, he recognized that those with vision who had heard the artist's descriptive audio found it aided them understand dance, which can seem so unclear.

Touching Collaboration Between Professional and Amateur Dancers

In a particular dance piece, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless from birth and who had always thought that dance was "mostly for those who can see". But Kikuchi has realized that it in fact "entails a lot of feeling and sentiments" and engages perceptions, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of once getting lost on his way home and using the sunlight to guide his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon represents the "soothing presence of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they move together," the choreographer said.

"It was in the afternoon and I had a intuition that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the light itself, I could sense the heat … So I persisted in walking to the west …. It guided me home. The sunshine was a good assistant to me. The sun could be a good representation. So the tale emerged from there."

Blindness Provides Distinct Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an academic of disability studies at the University of Toronto, commented: "Blindness and being blind invites a vibrant relationship with movement in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s relationship with their body and dance."

In collaborating with the dancers, she was seeking to communicate what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through vision," she said. "I speak with the dancers to get a understanding of how they’re feeling in their body, where their breath is, what they’re thinking, how their body are experiencing.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] costume, lighting, stage design and audio creators, the viewpoints and artistry of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted individuals, establish a connection through our passion of movement and performance. It is this artistry and love that I strive to integrate into the spoken commentary. It is a cooperation of the senses guided by blindness."

The artist noted: "While the vision of the performance, the stunning display, is present before the audience, there is much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is blindness that is welcoming sighted and blind patrons both into the unseen. What I desire is that, when audience members depart, they sense performance in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the existence, and listening to the perceptions of, visual impairment in innovative and dynamic ways."

Musician Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

The composer, whose recordings have amassed more than 3.5bn online plays, commented the descriptive commentary established a relationship between visual impairment and vision "by means of a musical landscape, providing expression to that which remains unseen". He noted: "It is not merely a explanation of a performance. It is the performance itself."

International Ballet Day Partners

The company's international collaborators for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will also supply entry to exclusive material, practice sessions and recently created productions – streamed as it happens via online channels.