Dutch National Ballet Giselle Jan. 21 in Cinemas

[California]

I didn't see the movie presentation, but I wish these broadcasts could be distributed in additional ways -- for sale as a download, or a rental on Amazon Prime, or an addition to Medici or Marquee. I assume the problem is licensing and union restrictions, but it's a shame something couldn't be worked out

[volcanohunter]

The credits listed Naxos and medici.tv. I assume that eventually there will be a DVD/Blu-ray and that the film will be added to the Medici library. I can understand why Pathé Live did not want to dilute the audience in any way yesterday. It's been two years since it last presented a ballet, and it has to persuade cinema chains that there is an audience for it.

With the exception of a single specialized cinema in Toronto, Canada hasn't seen a Royal Ballet cinemacast for years. The largest chain, Cineplex, had dropped the Royal Ballet (possibly because the ROH insisted on screenings of operas as well, but the chain has a contract with the Met, so that was impossible), but continued showing the Bolshoi. (In my experience, attendance for both companies had been equally modest.) During the 2020-21 season the Bolshoi was open, but cinemas in most of the world were not, so there were no new broadcasts. Rather than showing the repeats Pathé Live was offering, in the autumn of 2020 Cineplex opted for several Australian Ballet performances from the single season of cinema presentations the company attempted a few years earlier. (But which was not continued, presumably, because the audience was too small to make the enterprise profitable. Those films are now in the Medici library.)  Cinemas were open in my neck of the woods, but while I attended those Australian Ballet screenings (wearing a KF94 mask in a sparsely occupied auditorium), I can't imagine that they were especially profitable, because most cinemas in the country were closed. By December 2020 they were closed in this area as well.

I've added this long preamble to say, that when Bolshoi cinemacasts returned (briefly) in 2021-22, the Cineplex chain did not carry them. Ballet simply disappeared from Canadian cinemas, so even this Giselle was not a given.