Googling for Ballet

[drb]

Google's trends reports that New York City leads the world in Google searches for the word "ballet." Reports are in terms of # of searches for the topic divided by total # of searches (a/k/a normalized data). San Francisco is second.

Trends is tricky to apply to ballet companies. For instance American Ballet Theater searches peak around the time of Met Seasons, with New Yorkers leading the search parade. But American Ballet Theatre (just flipping last two letters) is more tied to national events (e.g., PBS telecasts, White House performances) and Los Angeles leads in interest. ABT prompts a search for a drug company with that ticker symbol. New York City Ballet peaks around Nutcracker season.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=ballet

[bart]

Great source, drb! Thanks. :blush:

I looked up "Balanchine." Can anyone explain the steep, but short, spike in googling in what appears to be October of 2004?

This could be the focus of quite an interesting game. Who would think for instance, that Milan and Rome are the biggest Googlers of Nureyev? Or that Ashton doesn't have enough searches to register on the charts? Nijinsky is there, but not Petipa or MacMillen. Pina Bausch makes the cut, but her top 6 sites are in Germany, followed by ... Lisbon.

Sylvie Guillem is there (Paris is tops). So is Darcey Bussell (London). But not Diana Vishneva.

Julio Bocca registers (Buenos Aires). So does Angel Corella (Barcelona, followed by Madrid). But not Ethan Stiefel.

Baryshnikov's top 10 googler locations are all in the US, topped by NYC.

I tried about 10 current NYCB dancers, but could find nothing. Suzanne Farrell appears only in the last quarter of 2005 (Don Quijote?), disappearing right after that. And that's only for Washington and NYC. D'Amboise, Hayden, and several other former NYCB dancers are missing.

[drb]

[

I looked up "Balanchine." Can anyone explain the steep, but short, spike in googling in what appears to be October of 2004?

I used interpolation to date the spike as November 8 give or take a day. On that date casting was posted for both the Gala and the first few Nutcrackers, which might explain part of it.

Pina Bausch makes the cut, but her top 6 sites are in Germany, followed by ... Lisbon.

It makes sense that Wuppertal is her top city, since her company is there. The spike this May corresponds to her towering success with the premiere of Vollmond (Full Moon) in Wuppertal. Quoting the recent Economist article on Berlin being the world's dance centre, which called this her best work in years: A man balanced on upturned drinking glasses. Another twisted and turned on the ground skilfully avoiding stones that another pours on him. In one of the funniest scenes, a girl coquettishly encouraged several men to unfasten her bra-strap, chiding each for being too slow.

Imagine what a spike Petipa would have had for Sleeping Beauty, even though a work of art with narrower appeal.

[drb]

One can also compare Googling popularity. By trial and error it seems New York City Ballet is the most popular ballet company (it is hard to check the Royal Ballet since so many companies have those words in their names) and Alvin Ailey the most popular modern company. By placing a comma between the names one finds that they are quite close, but with an edge most of the time for Alvin Ailey:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=Alvin+Ailey...eo=all&date=all