World Ballet Day

Posted on October 3, 2017

The online international celebration of ballet returns on October 5, with behind-the-scenes footage from the Australian Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet, The Royal Ballet, National Ballet of Canada and San Francisco Ballet. This is the fourth year of the programme: World Ballet Day 2016 had more than 700,000 views during the day, and later reached an audience of more than 6.7 million on-demand viewers.

Twenty-two hours of footage of class, rehearsals and interviews will be shown on Facebook Live, which will pass from company to company as the day progresses. Viewers can get involved using the hashtag #WorldBalletDay.

The Australian Ballet’s programme, which opens the day (at 2am BST) with company class, rehearsals for works including Swan Lake, Nijinsky, Spartacus and Coppélia, plus guest appearances from Queensland Ballet, West Australian Ballet and Hong Kong Ballet.

The Bolshoi Ballet follow from 7am, with class, rehearsals of Harald Lander’s Etudes and Marius Petipa’s La Bayadère, footage from the Moscow State Academy of Choreography and special guests Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

The Royal Ballet take over at 12 noon, including rehearsals for Arthur Pita’s new ballet The Wind, Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Kenneth MacMillan’s Jeux, The Judas Tree and Elite Syncopations, students from The Royal Ballet School and special guests Northern Ballet, Scottish Ballet, Northern Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet.

The National Ballet of Canada follow from 5pm, including rehearsals from Justin Peck’s Paz de la Jolla, John Neumeier’s Nijinsky and Christopher Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale.

The day ends with San Francisco Ballet, who will rehearse Jerome Robbins’ Opus 19/The Dreamer, new works by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Dwight Rhoden and David Dawson, The Sleeping Beauty and George Balanchine’s Serenade. There will also be guest appearances from Ballet West and Houston Ballet.

Visit worldballetday.com or the companies’ Facebook pages for more information.

Picture: The Royal Ballet take part in World Ballet Day 2016. Photograph: Andrej Uspenski

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.