World Ballet Day LIVE was a huge success on 4 October, streaming its longest ever broadcast of a 20-hour worldwide schedule. Kicking off with The Australian Ballet, Facebook LIVE streamed the day for the first time: the longest broadcast ever to be shown on the platform.For starters, Australian online audiences had access to exclusive and unparalleled behind the scenes rehearsals and interviews, beginning at 1pm EST. Hosted by Channel 7 presenter James Tobin and The Australian Ballet’s Coryphée Brooke Lockett, the four hour stint saw The Australian Ballet dancers in their daily class, and in rehearsals for upcoming shows including Swan Lake, Nijinsky, Spartacus and Coppélia, the same for the other four companies also involved.
Through Facebook, World Ballet Day aimed to reach an even wider audience via social media, providing a rare glimpse into the world beyond the stage. All footage was accessed via the World Ballet Day website, and viewers were encouraged to get involved online using the hashtag #WorldBalletDay. New for this year they were also able to join in by watching an instructional video that showed The Australian Ballet’s Ballet Master Tristan Message teaching three exercises seen on the day, for example.
Following The Australian Ballet was the Bolshoi Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada and San Francisco Ballet, all in collaboration for World Ballet Day LIVE as five of the world’s leading ballet companies. As the first event of its kind, the 20-hour streaming project garnered critical and viewer acclaim as an international success, a milestone for the dance industry. The first World Ballet Day LIVE was held in 2014, in which the live broadcast attracted a total of 502,823 views from dance lovers around the world. This was inspired by Royal Ballet Live in 2012, a nine-hour live streaming via YouTube and The Guardian website.