🔗 Share this article

The Royal Ballet for years made available audio devices with descriptive narration so that sightless patrons could understand the action on stage. Currently, through a groundbreaking production, the complete gathering will experience such commentary within a production that investigates how visual impairment can redefine our perceptions to sensation, music and narrative.

Visually Impaired Artist Partners with Celebrated Choreographers

The blind artist, a blind creator, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a new ballet company work that will launch on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as announced this week.

Within her creative practice, the artist is motivated by a desire to show how blindness and physical challenge can present an unique form of awareness for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the music, forms the center of the show on stage.

"Creating world-class dance and opera for each person" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's director, the company is focusing on "total access – welcoming artists and viewers to experience ballet in transformative fresh approaches," he explained.

Multiple Dance Creators Partner on New Production

The recent commission is being choreographed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, all working with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the director of this production, stated: "World Ballet Day was founded on the idea of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're expanding that idea more to explore how impaired perspectives can shape our creative medium, and welcome viewers of diverse capacities and experiences to encounter ballet in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he recognized that sighted people who had encountered the artist's spoken descriptions found it aided them comprehend dance, which can appear so unclear.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Professional and Amateur Performers

In a particular performance, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from childhood and who had previously believed that ballet was "mostly for those who can see". But Kikuchi has realized that it in fact "entails a lot of emotion and feelings" and taps into faculties, "sight-based and non-sight".

The dancer's individual experience of once becoming disoriented on his way home and using the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a duet in which Dixon becomes the "warm breath of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," the choreographer explained.

"It was during the day and I had a sense that the sunlight should be shining from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the rays itself, I could perceive the warmth … So I continued moving to the west …. It directed me home. The sun was a good assistant to me. The sunlight could be a good representation. So the story developed from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Unique Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability research at the Toronto university, stated: "Blindness and lacking sight invites a active connection with movement in a way that is like a professional dancer’s connection with their physical self and dance."

In working with the dancers, the artist was seeking to communicate what "they feel in their physical being, something that’s just not available through sight," she noted. "I converse with the performers to get a understanding of how they’re feeling in their body, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their muscles are experiencing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, lighting, scenery and sound designers, the perceptions and creativity of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted individuals, develop a rapport through our passion of dance and dance. It is this artistry and passion that I try to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a collaboration of the senses directed by blindness."

She noted: "Even though the view of the performance, the stunning display, is present facing the audience, there is a great deal that they miss or valuing, and it is blindness that is encouraging seeing and visually impaired viewers equally into the invisible. What I hope is that, when viewers leave, they sense performance in a different way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and listening to the understandings of, blindness in fresh and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Narration

The composer, whose recordings have amassed more than billions of online plays, stated the audio descriptions created a rapport between visual impairment and vision "by means of a audio environment, offering narration to that which is not always visible". He noted: "This isn't just a description of a production. It is the art."

World Dance Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s global associates for World Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will furthermore provide access to behind-the-scenes footage, preparations and newly commissioned works – streamed live via their official platform.