GLOBAL FIRST: FIVE WORLD-CLASS BALLET COMPANIES, ONE DAY OF LIVE STREAMING ON WEDNESDAY 1 OCTOBER
Australian Ballet | Bolshoi Ballet | The Royal Ballet | The National Ballet of Canada | San Francisco Ballet
The first ever World Ballet Day will see an unprecedented collaboration between five of the world’s leading ballet companies. This online event will take place on Wednesday 1 October when each of the companies will stream live behind the scenes action from their rehearsal studios.
Starting at the beginning of the dancers’ day, each of the five ballet companies — Australian Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada and San Francisco Ballet — will take the lead for a four hour period streaming live from their headquarters starting with the Australian Ballet in Melbourne. The live link then passes across time zones and cultures from Melbourne to Moscow to London to Toronto to San Francisco.
The live streaming will take viewers on a journey into the rarely seen backstage lives of ballet dancers. This unusual access will throw a spot light on the differences in style between the five companies as they follow a very similar routine but approach choreography and performance in the ways that have made them unique on the world stage. Starting with morning class to warm up the body with different exercises, moving on to rehearsals for their upcoming performances the day will be a celebration of dance; the athleticism and unparalleled dedication of all those involved in creating a world-class ballet company.
Viewers will be able to engage and interact with dancers, choreographers and coaches who live and breathe ballet every day of their working lives, asking questions throughout the day as well as having the opportunity to contribute by submitting a film of themselves doing a pirouette wherever they are in the world. These will be edited into a film celebrating the worldwide appeal of dance.
The day’s streaming will be repeated on YouTube in full so that viewers around the world can catch up on any parts of the day they missed. Edited highlights will then be made available for further viewing.
World Ballet Day is a development from Royal Ballet Live which was a nine-hour live streaming via YouTube and The Guardian website in March 2012. This unique event achieved 200,000 views of the live stream and repeat broadcast and a total of 2.5 million views of YouTube Royal Ballet Live material to date. It is, however, the first time that four of the five ballet companies are taking the cameras backstage to reveal the sweat and determination of these talented dancers.
In another first, this collaboration is the first time that YouTube has streamed live more than nine hours of content.
Full details of the unique day’s activities will be available in due course.
The Bolshoi Theatre plans to mark World Ballet Day by presenting rehearsals of Jean-Christophe Maillot’s The Taming of the Shrew (the last season première) and the ballet A Legend of Love which returns to the Bolshoi Theatre Main Stage in a major revival on 23 October and, on 26 October, will be shown live in over 800 cinemas the world over.