The inaugural World Ballet Day LIVE on Wednesday 1 October 2014 highlighted an enormous global love of ballet as audiences joined to watch the live online stream, engaging across social media channels in unprecedented numbers.
Streamed online for 20 hours from 12pm Australian Eastern Time, World Ballet Day LIVE saw a collaboration of five of the world's premier ballet companies, each allotted four hours of the feed. The Australian Ballet led the charge, followed by Bolshoi Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada and San Francisco Ballet. Across the five companies' YouTube channels, a total of 195,430 live plays were recorded over the initial 20 hours, and this number is expected to increase exponentially as viewers continue to enjoy the footage over the coming days. Viewers watched an average of28 minutes, enjoying over 16,100 cumulative hoursof footage from The Australian Ballet. With a Twitter reach in the millions, #worldballetdaywas the top trending topic in Australia at 11am on the day, one hour prior to the live YouTube stream. Throughout the stream, World Ballet Day LIVE also gave audiences the opportunity to engage with their favourite dancers and artists via Twitter, with hundreds of questions tweeted and promoted onscreen.Artistic Director of The Australian Ballet, David McAllister, is thrilled with the level of online engagement. "It was such a great experience to have the focus of the world on The Australian Ballet's studios for four hours," he said.
"Each company excelled and showed why ballet continues to be an enduring art form that reflects the unique culture of each country. For us, the athleticism and daring of our dancers was seen in all the excepts we presented, from Graeme Murphy's iconic Swan Lake to Tim Harbour's world premiere work Ostinatoand Stanton Welch's La Bayadère."Videos