Photo by Erik Tomasson
Five major ballet companies will join for a day of live streaming of their work on Sept. 30-Oct. 1. Each company will show behind-the-scenes action from their rehearsal studios.
For the address, says San Francisco Ballet, go to the company's site at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on that day, but that surely won't work for the others, so try Google, and Music News will find and publish more complete information before the event.
The schedule (all in Pacific Time):
Australian Ballet, 7 p.m. Sept. 30
Bolshoi, 11 p.m. Sept 30
Royal Ballet, 3 a.m. Oct. 1
National Ballet of Canada, 7 a.m. Oct. 1
San Francisco Ballet, 11 a.m. Oct. 1 (aha!)
Viewers, says the announcement, will be able to engage and interact with dancers, choreographers and coaches, 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 project of Royal Ballet Live, which was a nine-hour live streaming via YouTube and The Guardian website in 2012, attracting 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. This, however, is the first time that four of the five ballet companies are taking the cameras backstage.
Highlights from San Francisco Ballet will include rehearsals of a wide variety of works, including Yuri Possokhov’s RAkU, which is featured on Program 1 of SF Ballet’s 2015 season and runs Jan. 27-Feb. 7; Helgi Tomasson’s Giselle, which runs Jan. 29-Feb. 10; and William Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, which is featured on Program 3 and runs Feb. 24-March 7.