World Ballet Day is celebrated this Thursday with the best companies in the world to show live video of their creations on the website “World Ballet Day” for 24 hours.
In an atypical year, in which dance has gained prominence on social networks, it will be possible to attend shows from three of the most important companies today: The Royal Ballet, The Australian Ballet, and the Bolshoi Ballet.
But many other structures will participate, as guests. The American Ballet Theater, National Ballet of Canada, La Scala Ballet, National Ballet of Cuba, or the mythical Mariinsky Ballet are just some of the examples. Most have not taken the stage in eight months, which raises expectations.
Viewers can access the World Ballet Day website, or the companies’ Facebook and YouTube, to watch the broadcasts. The event starts at two in the morning, in Portugal, with the broadcast of the Australian Ballet; the Bolshoi takes care of the broadcast at seven o’clock and the Royal Ballet at 11 o’clock.
Following the restrictions in force in Melbourne, the Australian Ballet has recently returned to the Primrose Potter Australian Ballet Center. The broadcast started with a ballet class with live piano and followed by presentations by Bodytorque. Digital, an online series of new choreographies preceded by interviews with artistic teams.
The Bolshoi Ballet will dedicate its live broadcast to Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky, and to the composer’s 180th birthday. The stream will give access to the rehearsals of “Sleeping Beauty”, “Swan Lake”, “The Nutcracker” and “Onegin”. There will also be interviews with Bolshoi dancers Svetlana Zakharova, Ekaterina Krysanova, Olga Smirnova, Artem Ovcharenko, Egor Geraschenko, and Makhar Vaziev.
The Royal Ballet will broadcast a pre-recorded class on the stage of the Royal Opera House, and then will broadcast the “Tchaikovsky pas de deux”, in George Balanchine’s version, in an essay with the stars Marianela Nuñez and Vadim Muntagirov. The broadcast will also feature “In Our Wishes” by Cathy Marston, in an essay with Fumi Kaneko and Reece Clarke and Fernando Montaño’s essay of “Dance of the Blessed Spirits”, by Frederick Ashton. There will also be interviews with the artistic team to celebrate Black History Month.
