World Ballet Day schedule announced

[kbarber]

The Australian Ballet
30 Sep - October 1 2015

22:00 - 3:00 EDT, 19:00 - 24:00 PDT

Melbourne

Website

Programming

The Australian Ballet once again kicks off World Ballet Day LIVE from its headquarters in Melbourne, Australia.

Company Class

RehearsalArtistic Director David McAllister’s brand new production of The Sleeping Beauty

Behind the ScenesThe Australian Ballet School
Audience Engagement Programs
Ballet Philanthropy
The Magical Wardrobe Department

Sneak PreviewTake a sneak peek at a new ballet for children

Bolshoi Ballet

01 Oct 2015

03:00 - 06:00 EDT, 00:00 - 03:00 PDT

Moscow

website

Programming Enjoy a tour of productions from the past year, and a preview of what is to come as the Bolshoi Ballet heads into it’s 240th season.

Morning Class

Recent ProductionsRadu Poklitaru’s Hamlet
Yuri Possokhov’s Hero of Our Time

Rehearsals

Preview of Upcoming SeasonWorld premieres, revivals, special projects, festivals, international tours, guest company presentations on the Bolshoi Theatre stages, and a gala dedicated to the memory of Maya Plisetskaya.

Interviews Throughout the Day

Interviews Throughout the DayVladimir Urin, Sergei Filin, Yuri Possokhov, Boris Akimov, Brigitte Lefevre, Azarii Plisetski, and more!

The Royal Ballet
01 Oct 2015

06:00 - 11:00 EDT, 03:00 - 08:00 PDT

London

Website

Programming

Go behind the scenes of The Royal Ballet’s production of Romeo & Juliet, and listen to a discussion about the future of ballet in the United Kingdom.

Company Class

Behind the ScenesSir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo & Juliet

Discussion: The Future of BalletHosted by The Royal Ballet and featuring experts from Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet, and Scottish Ballet

The National Ballet of Canada
01 Oct 2015

11:00 - 16:00 EDT, 08:00 - 13:00 (PDT)

Toronto

Website

ProgrammingJoin The National Ballet of Canada at the Place des Arts in Montréal as they take audiences behind the scenes during their fall tour.

Company Class

RehearsalChristopher Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale

Behind the Scenes: On TourGo behind the scenes at dress rehearsals of William Forsythe’s the second detail, Marco Goecke’s Le Spectre de la Rose, and Wayne McGregor’s Chroma

San Francisco Ballet

01 Oct 2015

16:00 - 21:00 EDT, 13:00 - 18:00 (PDT)

San Francisco

Website

Programming

San Francisco Ballet will finish off the broadcast with a preview of their upcoming season and interviews with some of ballet’s most well known choreographers.
Host: Former SF Ballet Principal Dancer Joanna Berman

Company Class

Rehearsals Featuring ballets from San Francisco Ballet’s upcoming Repertory Season and tour to China

Interviews Throughout the DayArtistic Director & Principal Choreographer, Helgi Tomasson
The Royal Ballet Artist in Residence, Liam Scarlett
Associate Choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet, William Forsythe

[volcanohunter]

The Royal Ballet's release also indicates that the stream will include recorded segments from the Bangarra Dance Theatre, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, English National Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, Houston Ballet, Northern Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Scottish Ballet.

http://www.roh.org.uk/news/world-ballet-day-2015-to-take-place-on-1-october

San Francisco Ballet adds Boston Ballet, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, National Ballet of China, Nederlands Dans Theater and Royal New Zealand Ballet.

https://www.sfballet.org/about/media_center/press_releases/World_Ballet%20Day_2015

[sandik]

Oh excellent -- this is such a good idea, and last year's inaugural effort was great fun!

[pherank]

Agreed - it was fun to watch WBD live last year. I see we will get to hear from Yuri Possokhov and Brigitte Lefevre, but not in the expected places. I would like to see some footage of Possokhov's Hero of Our Time (sounds very Soviet, does it not?). It would be even better if SFB showed performance footage of Swimmer (which is full of Americana), but that probably isn't possible (or planned).

[volcanohunter]

I would like to see some footage of Possokhov's Hero of Our Time (sounds very Soviet, does it not?).

I don't see why. Lermontov's novel pre-dated the Soviet Union by some 80 years, and that's longer than the USSR itself lasted. I don't think there's any reason to expect anything Grigorovichean.

[MadameP]

I enjoyed watching this last year - but if only Mariinsky could be one of the companies taking part!

[stuben]

Can't wait and know where I will be those days wonderful chance to see so many companies within two days without have to travel all over the world

[pherank]

I don't see why. Lermontov's novel pre-dated the Soviet Union by some 80 years, and that's longer than the USSR itself lasted. I don't think there's any reason to expect anything Grigorovichean.

Ah, Lermontov - thanks for those details. That makes more sense given Possokhov's personality. But I can't see him really trying to do an Onegin-type story ballet. I'm guessing Yuri finds a way to make the structure more 'experimental'. Has anyone seen the actual production of Hero of Our Time?

[volcanohunter]

The novel is written using multiple narrators and therefore multiple perspectives. To try to put this across, Possokhov uses three different dancers as Pechorin.

[yudi]

Last year they said that the 3 hours live-broadcasting of each theater in WBD would be abstracted to 1 hour video and leave it on YouTube after WBD. Why SFB has only 15 minutes left? I was in a time-zone where I could not hold up to see SFB's program. I was hoping I could make it up later. However, they cut too much.

[Helene]

I don't remember SFB's content. Was there a lot of Balanchine, Morris, or Tharp, etc. where permission to broadcast was limited to the initial broadcast?

[volcanohunter]

No, I don't think so. I remember there was quasi-Petipa/Gorsky, Tomasson, Possokhov and an itty bit of Forsythe right at the very end.

http://www.sfballetblog.org/2014/09/sf-ballet-watch-world-ballet-day-live/

[volcanohunter]

It's strange that four of the participating companies are scheduled to broadcast for five hours--particularly challenging for the National Ballet of Canada while it's on tour--but the Bolshoi is planning only three. Between company class and all those promised interviews and previews, this leaves relatively little time for live rehearsal footage. But then I wasn't very impressed with the company's participation last year either. The segment began with a voiceover describing the vast size of the company, but what followed was an oh-so-pristine class featuring about two dozen handpicked dancers. It begged the question, where were the other 200? During the entire stream I'd venture to guess we didn't see more than 40 of them. The company seems happy to get the international advertising, but doesn't really want to show how it works. Too controlled, too phony.

[sandik]

The company seems happy to get the international advertising, but doesn't really want to show how it works. Too controlled, too phony.

Of course they don't want to show how it works -- they've never wanted the outside to see inside their structure. And really, a lot of how it works is tough to show in a live feed. I'm thinking of the meetings we watched in the Wiseman film about the POB (which I love). That was just a sliver of how that world works, and it was a tricky piece of filmmaking.

I understand your frustration (who wouldn't want to be a fly on those walls, really) but I guess I don't really expect an un-managed view of the participants.

[Helene]

Last year's Bolshoi segment struck me as a cross between a chatty lovefest and an info-mercial. But then again, for the most part, the Burns ABT documentary struck me as an infomercial for McKenzie's (far fewer than) two-dozen cherry-picked dancers.

Of course they don't want to show how it works -- they've never wanted the outside to see inside their structure. And really, a lot of how it works is tough to show in a live feed. I'm thinking of the meetings we watched in the Wiseman film about the POB (which I love). That was just a sliver of how that world works, and it was a tricky piece of filmmaking.

While for the most part, the business aspects of Wiseman's film were the most interesting to me -- that scene between Lefevre and Emmanuel Gat was a miracle; the scene between Lefevre and the young dancer at the end was grotesquerie -- there were substantial segments of rehearsal footage, and there's nothing in a multiple-hour shoot that would preclude something similar, were the companies willing to take a risk on the live rehearsal experience. If I were an AD allowing video of a rehearsal, I would be sure to schedule my most even-tempered dancer-and-choreographer/stager combination for it, drink a big glass of wine, and hope for the best.

[volcanohunter]

The thing is that last year I didn't get that contrived feeling from the other participating companies. Of course the view couldn't be comprehensive, and naturally everything had to be well planned, but no one came across as inauthentic, and generally I thought those companies did a great job of making ballet and ballet dancers seem friendly, accessible and un-neurotic. The only thing authentic about the Bolshoi feed was cranky old Grigorovich, who wouldn't give the unctuous hostess the time of day. (He may even have used foul language during rehearsals; I'd have to go back and check, but have little desire to do it.) Everything else the Bolshoi showed came off as stagy and opaque.

[Helene]

I agree with you: the other companies looked very natural. The moment Filin started to cackle with the way-too-caffeinated hostess, I knew we were in for a very long info-mercial, and not in a good way. The tone back-and-forth reminded me of an over-the-top Russian New Year TV special I saw with friends in Tallinn.

[Fraildove]

One thing to remember about Russian companies... All 200 members would not be in one class. Dancers are assigned to coaches that are retired artists. So the morning classes are broken up into several different classes. It's not like most western companies where the entire company has one class, altogether, with the AD or ballet master. I agree that for the broadcast they probably did handpick a group and put them in a class together for that day, but even if the hadn't, you wouldn't generally see everyone together, unless on tour. Just a side note

[Dreamer]

Four out of the five ballet companies represented in WBD are from English speaking countries. Conversations conducted in a foreign language might sometimes come across as unfriendly, unauthentic or staged if one doesn't understand it. Besides a lot of details get lost in translation.

[volcanohunter]

One thing to remember about Russian companies... All 200 members would not be in one class. Dancers are assigned to coaches that are retired artists. So the morning classes are broken up into several different classes. It's not like most western companies where the entire company has one class, altogether, with the AD or ballet master. I agree that for the broadcast they probably did handpick a group and put them in a class together for that day, but even if the hadn't, you wouldn't generally see everyone together, unless on tour. Just a side note

In fairness, the Australian Ballet also showed only one of its two classes, although David McAllister joked that most of the dancers had opted for the studio with the cameras that day. One of the extremely frustrating things about the Bolshoi's camera work was that for no reason at all the shot would change from the studio to a view of the square outside the theater. To give at least some idea of the scope of the company, it would have been much better to have a roaming camera look into the other studios to show a bit of the other classes taking place simultaneously. This was a missed opportunity. As it stood, viewers really could be left wondering where all the other dancers were hiding. In any case, the extremely sparse and orderly class during the stream was very different from the shots of overcrowded barres seen in the Bolshoi Babylon trailer.

Four out of the five ballet companies represented in WBD are from English speaking countries. Conversations conducted in a foreign language might sometimes come across as unfriendly, unauthentic or staged if one doesn't understand it. Besides a lot of details get lost in translation.

I know Russian and was actually extremely relieved that most of what was said was not translated, because the effect would have been even more nauseating.

[Dreamer]

I know Russian and was actually extremely relieved that most of what was said was not translated, because the effect would have been even more nauseating.

I enjoyed Akimov's class, rehearsals of The Legend of Love and discussions around A Hero of Our Time between Possokhov and Serebrennikov. The hostess was annoying at times and the overall presentation could've been less discursive. But other than that I can't think of anything that can be characterized as nauseating. And yes, sparsely attended morning classes are not uncommon. The class at SFB was also far from full; among the principals I only saw Yuan Yuan Tan. But I might be mistaken.

[volcanohunter]

I remember seeing a few principals in the San Francisco class. Certainly Maria Kochetkova was hard to miss. The studio wasn't empty because portable barres were used to accommodate all the dancers. The Bolshoi's was the only class without them.

[Josette]

For the San Francisco Ballet class, I recall seeing principal dancers Vanessa Zahorian, Jaime Garcia Castillo, Yuan Yuan Tan, Maria Kochetkova, Lorena Feijoo. I'm blanking on what other male principal dancers were in class, but I noticed that Tiit Helimets was not there. I enjoyed noting the differences in the various company classes.

[volcanohunter]

Also Davit Karapetyan and Gennadi Nedvigin, I think.

[Dreamer]

I looked through the available vieos of SFB on youtube and this time spotted all the mentioned principals (Tan, Kochetkova, Zahorian, Feijoo, Chung, Karapetyan, Nedvigin, Garcia Castilla) whom I failed noticing during the live stream. I guess after 12 hours of nonstop watching my brain stopped paying attention.