Photo by David Cooper
More information has become available since the report here before about World Ballet Day: Five major companies around the world planning to provide live streaming of their work, including normally behind the scenes rehearsals and activities, in a 20-hour program. Edited highlights of the stream will subsequently be repeated on YouTube to allow viewers to catch up on anything they missed.
Each company will start its four-hour portion with class and then open the rehearsal studios to the cameras to show what goes on in the hours before the curtain goes up. Watch each streaming on the participating company's website (see below) or the whole package on the S.F. Ballet site.
First up: Australian Ballet, 7 p.m. Pacific Time, Sept. 30, a free morning of ballet-style classes on the main stage at Federation Square, Melbourne. Classes will be led by former principal artist Steven Heathcote, who recently returned to the company as ballet master and repetiteur. Dancers from leading performing arts schools across Melbourne will be participating.
Next, Bolshoi Ballet, 11 p.m. Sept. 30. Rehearsal of Jean-Christophe Maillot’s The Taming of the Shrew is followed by A Legend of Love, which returns to the Bolshoi in a major revival on Oct. 23 and 26, to be shown live in 800 cinemas around the world.
The Royal Ballet, which initiated the project, will provide four hours of programs from Covent Garden, beginning at 3 a.m. (pity!) Oct. 1. It begins with Carlos Acosta coaching principal Vadim Muntagirov in the role of Basilio in Don Quixote. Principals Marianela Nuñez and Federico Bonelli will rehearse Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon in preparation for the ROH Live cinema screening on Oct. 16.
Artist in Residence Liam Scarlett will rehearse his new work The Age of Anxiety with principals Laura Morera and Steven McRae; the ballet is inspired by W.H. Auden’s poem about four disparate characters in a wartime New York bar trying to make sense of their shifting worlds.
Photo by Elena Fetisova
The full Company will be seen in rehearsal for Artistic Associate Christopher Wheeldon’s latest one-act work, Aeternum, and Frederick Ashton’s Scènes de ballet, Ashton's own favorite.
National Ballet of Canada, 7 a.m. Oct. 1. The stream will begin with company class and continue with rehearsals of Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, which opens the 2014-2015 season at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on Nov. 8, and John Neumeier’s Nijinsky, which runs Nov. 22-30.
San Francisco Ballet winds up the the day, beginning at 11 a.m. Oct. 1. Plans so far call rehearsal excerpts from Yuri Possokhov’s RAkU, which is featured on Program 1 of SF Ballet’s 2015 season and runs Jan. 27-Feb. 7; Helgi Tomasson’s Giselle, which runs Jan. 29-Feb. 10; and William Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, to music by Schubert, featured on Program 3, Feb. 24-March 7.
Interviews scheduled include by Corps de Ballet member and choreographer Myles Thatcher and choreographer Alexei Ratmansky. Thatcher has been named a protégé in the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, with Ratmansky serving as his mentor.
The broadcast will be co-hosted by former SF Ballet School student and now ABC-7 reporter Leyla Gulen and SFB Ballet Master Christopher Stowell. They will narrate events and interview numerous company artists and staff members, including Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson, who celebrates his 30th anniversary with the company; principal dancers Taras Domitro, Maria Kochetkova, and Yuan Yuan Tan, who has been dancing for 20 years with SFB; Music Director Martin West; orchestra member and RAkU composer Shinji Eshima, among others.