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This prestigious ballet company traditionally offered headphones with spoken commentary so that sightless patrons could understand the performance on stage. Presently, in a revolutionary new work, the complete crowd will hear such commentary within a piece that investigates how visual impairment can reshape our perceptions to feeling, audio and narrative.

Blind Creator Works with Renowned Choreographers

Devon Healey, a blind artist, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in developing a recent ballet company production that will debut on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

Through her work, Healey is driven by a desire to demonstrate how blindness and physical challenge can present an unique mode of awareness for all people. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the composition, establishes the center of the production on stage.

"Producing top-tier dance and musical theater for all" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under the director, the company's leader, the company is focusing on "complete inclusion – inviting artists and audiences to discover dance in life-changing fresh approaches," he explained.

Multiple Choreographers Collaborate on New Work

The new work is being created by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, each collaborating with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this production, commented: "International Ballet Day was established on the concept of accessibility. Following a decade, we're expanding that notion more to consider how disabled perspectives can influence our creative medium, and encourage audiences of every capability and histories to discover ballet in new ways."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he understood that those with vision who had heard the artist's descriptive audio found it aided them comprehend dance, which can appear so unclear.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Expert and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from childhood and who had previously believed that ballet was "mainly for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it actually "entails a lot of feeling and sentiments" and activates perceptions, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's personal story of earlier getting lost on his way home and using the sun to orient his way back had motivated a dance piece in which the professional dancer embodies the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," the choreographer explained.

"It was during the day and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be shining from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the light itself, I could feel the temperature … So I continued moving to the west …. It led me home. The sun was a good helper to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful representation. So the tale developed from there."

Blindness Presents Special Relationship with Dance

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

In working with the performers, the artist was striving to express what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not available through vision," she explained. "I talk with the performers to get a sense of how they are in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they’re thinking, how their physical form are experiencing.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] costume, illumination, scenery and music creators, the understandings and innovation of visual impairment are constantly visible as we, visually impaired and seeing people, develop a connection through our love of movement and performance. It is this creativity and affection that I attempt to weave into the spoken commentary. It is a collaboration of the perceptions led by visual impairment."

She continued: "Even though the view of the dance, the beautiful display, is there facing the patrons, there is a great deal that they miss or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging sighted and blind audience members equally into the unseen. What I wish is that, when audience members depart, they sense performance in a distinct way, and they’re also sensing the being, and listening to the viewpoints of, blindness in new and active ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose compositions have gathered more than 3.5 billion online plays, said the audio descriptions formed a rapport between visual impairment and sight "through a musical landscape, offering narration to that which is not always visible". He continued: "This isn't merely a explanation of a performance. It is the art."

World Dance Event Collaborators

The company's international associates for World Ballet Day comprise the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The companies will also supply entry to exclusive footage, rehearsals and freshly produced works – broadcast live via the event website.