Ratmansky Giselle on Youku

[KathyKat]

The complete recent Bolshoi Giselle with Smirnova and Belyakov can be found on Youku which is China’s version of YouTube. I was so thrilled to find it there since I had been wanting to see it again ever since the live cinema cast last January. It can be found by just searching Olga Smirnova. It is such a beautiful performance and I plan on watching it again and again before it (inevitably) gets taken down. 

[California]

The ballet world needs to step up its thinking on how to bring in more revenue. Disney figured out that by offering Hamilton, they'd likely bring in a lot of new subscribers who wouldn't otherwise bother. I've looked at Marquee TV, but they don't seem to have anything special I haven't already seen, on PBS or DVD. If they added the Ratmansky Giselle and perhaps also his reconstructed Swan Lake for La Scala/Zurich, now I might be very interested! If Bolshoi or La Scala doesn't want to sell these things alone, join forces with somebody like Marquee with the ballet company making some revenue from the rights. ABT could sell their Sleeping Beauty that way.  Ballet companies are giving away so much great stuff for free right now, but there are still some valuable properties out there with potential.

[volcanohunter]

1 hour ago, California said:

If Bolshoi or La Scala doesn't want to sell these things alone, join forces with somebody like Marquee with the ballet company making some revenue from the rights.

The Bolshoi and La Scala don't own the rights to their broadcast-quality videos. They are owned by Bel Air Classiques and RAI respectively. That's true of a lot of companies, and I sincerely doubt that Marquee TV or any other streaming platform could afford the production costs associated with filming a performance. 

[California]

10 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

The Bolshoi and La Scala don't own the rights to their broadcast-quality videos. They are owned by Bel Air Classiques and RAI respectively. That's true of a lot of companies, and I sincerely doubt that Marquee TV or any other streaming platform could afford the production costs associated with filming a performance. 

I just looked at the Bel air site. A lot is missing. My point is simply that there are valuable performances out there that many of us would pay $$ to stream and perhaps own and the ballet world hasn't quite figured out how to do this well and maximize revenues. As we've noted repeatedly over the years, the European and Russian companies have done a great job filming performances and then selling on DVD. More recently, many of those are licensed to Amazon Prime, for more revenue. But we could still see some improvement. I always worry about the bootlegged stuff I see on YouTube and elsewhere -- does it harbor a virus that wasn't caught by the hosting site. I'm never entirely confident. 

We're seeing some experimentation triggered by the pandemic and hope we'll see more. The Louisville Ballet is going to do an all-digital season if  you subscribe. I wonder how that will work out. Some ballet academies (like Washington Ballet) are still giving away some classes for free but selling access to others. All experiments, of course, to see what works. 

[volcanohunter]

I myself wonder how Bel Air Classiques decides on which video to release on disc. All the time. As it stands less than a quarter of the Bolshoi's cinemacasts have been released on disc. But I was struck by something I read on Twitter the other day, when a Tony- and Olivier Award-winning sound designer noted that among the 30+ paid streams of plays he'd worked on, only two turned a profit.

 

[California]

I don't want to jinx this, but the complete ballet is now on YouTube in the US:

Act I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ips1kxGiWoc

Act II: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOmj0bcJtJ0&t=2336s

 

This is the performance we saw on live stream in January at AMC theaters. I would have paid to see it before this.