World Ballet Day Is Back, Hooray!
T-minus a week until one of the happiest days of the year: World Ballet Day will be back for round three on Tuesday, October 4!
When we say that World Ballet Day is straight-up Ballet Christmas, we aren’t exaggerating. Since 2014, the annual event has brought together top-notch companies from all over the world—and we do mean ALL over, from Australia to Russia—for a celebration of the art form we love so much. What does that look like? It looks like a full day of live broadcasts, inviting fans inside technique classes, rehearsals and backstage preparations. Last year, the event pulled in more than 350,000 viewers from 150 countries.
The Royal Ballet in class during World Ballet Day 2015 (screenshot via YouTube)
This year’s featured companies are The Australian Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, and San Francisco Ballet; they’ll air a combined 20 hours of behind-the-scenes footage. (The event actually starts at 10 pm October 3 EST, with the Australian Ballet, and then moves across the globe, concluding with San Francisco Ballet on the afternoon of October 4.) There’s a cool new twist, though: This time around, each of the five partner companies have invited a whole slew of nearby regional dance organizations to participate in their World Ballet Day broadcasts. It’s a doozy of a list: Hong Kong Ballet, Queensland Ballet, West Australian Ballet, English National Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Scottish Ballet, Northern Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Houston Ballet, Boston Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Ballets du Monte Carlo and Dutch National Ballet.
I mean. You can’t NOT watch this.
You can get involved, too. On the day of the broadcast, chat with other ballet fans as you watch the broadcast at worldballetday.com, and submit questions for the dancers using the hashtag #worldballetday on Twitter.
Watch World Ballet Day unfold at worldballetday.com—or (new this year!) via Facebook LIVE. (It’ll be the longest broadcast ever to be shown on the platform. NBD.) In the meantime, whet your ballet appetite with the trailer below, and enjoy the recordings of the 2015 broadcast.
