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This prestigious ballet company has long provided headphones with spoken commentary so that sightless audience members could understand the performance on stage. Now, via a revolutionary performance, the entire audience will hear such descriptions within a production that examines how visual impairment can transform our reactions to sensation, audio and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Creator Collaborates with Celebrated Choreographers

The blind artist, a blind artist, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in producing a new ballet company commission that will launch on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, Healey is motivated by a wish to illustrate how blindness and disability can provide an different form of awareness for each individual. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the music, creates the core of the production on stage.

"Creating top-tier ballet and musical theater for each person" is a motto of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the company is focusing on "total access – encouraging artists and viewers to discover ballet in transformative innovative methods," he said.

Multiple Dance Creators Partner on New Work

The fresh production is being created by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, all working with Healey.

Robert Binet, the director of this work, said: "World Ballet Day was founded on the principle of access. After a ten years, we're pushing that notion deeper to consider how impaired outlooks can mold our art form, and invite audiences of all abilities and backgrounds to encounter dance in new ways."

Having worked with the artist in Canada and Australian locations, the curator realized that those with vision who had experienced Healey’s spoken descriptions felt it assisted them understand dance, which can seem so unclear.

Moving Partnership Between Expert and Amateur Performers

In a particular duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless since birth and who had always thought that dance was "mostly for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it actually "entails a lot of emotion and emotions" and engages faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of once becoming disoriented on his way home and depending on the sun to guide his way back had motivated a performance in which the professional dancer represents the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they move together," the choreographer explained.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sun 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 temperature … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It led me home. The sun was a excellent helper to me. The sunlight could be a good representation. So the narrative originated from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Distinct Relationship with Motion

Healey, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and lacking sight fosters a vibrant bond with movement in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s relationship with their body and motion."

In working with the dancers, the artist was seeking to convey what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not available through looking," she said. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they feel in their body, where their breathing is, what they consider, how their body are feeling.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] costume, illumination, set and audio creators, the understandings and artistry of blindness are always there as we, blind and seeing persons, establish a rapport through our affection of dance and performance. It is this artistry and passion that I try to blend into the detailed narration. It is a collaboration of the faculties guided by visual impairment."

She noted: "Even though the view of the dance, the beautiful visual feast, is present facing the viewers, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is blindness that is encouraging sighted and blind patrons both into the invisible. What I hope is that, when audience members exit, they experience dance in a new way, and they’re also experiencing the presence, and listening to the perceptions of, visual impairment in new and vibrant ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose compositions have amassed more than 3.5bn online plays, stated the audio descriptions established a rapport between blindness and vision "through a musical landscape, giving voice to that which remains unseen". He noted: "This isn't just a narration of a production. It is the performance itself."

World Dance Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global associates for World Ballet Day comprise the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will also offer entry to exclusive footage, rehearsals and recently created pieces – streamed in real-time via their official platform.