World Ballet Day 2021: Who and When

Is there a World Ballet Day happening in 2022? Happy to report, yes!
It’s November 2nd and details are HERE.

 

It’s officially World Ballet Day 2021! It’s Tuesday, Oct 19th (in Australia – here on the West Coast it’s 6pm) and here’s the all-important link: https://worldballetday.com

The annual event is hosted once again by The Royal Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet and The Australian Ballet. Over the course of the day (and remember that Australia kicks off the event, which, in North America, will actually be Monday night), rehearsals, interviews and classes will be streamed across six continents, offering unique behind-the-scenes glimpses of the professional ballet world. Want to know who’s participating this year? Scroll down! Want to know what times the events are taking place in your time zone? Scroll down!

Here’s a notice from The Royal Ballet’s September press release:

With COVID-19 guidelines changing daily across the globe, dance companies have struggled to return to stages and rehearsal studios. This year’s celebration will recognize the extraordinary resilience of this art form in the face of those challenges, showcasing the breadth of talent performing, choreographing, and working on productions today.

The 2021 edition of #WorldBalletDay is set to be the biggest ever. In collaboration with TikTok, and with streams across YouTube and Facebook, this year’s viewership is expected to exceed the previous record set in 2019, when #WorldBalletDay content was viewed over 300 million times.

More details for 2021’s big day will be shared here as they emerge, or visit https://worldballetday.com for latest notifications.  (This is also where you can watch The Australian Ballet kick off the event with its livestream.) To help pump you up for the event, you can read about last year’s event HERE and watch this, The Royal Ballet’s company class, from World Ballet Day 2020. It’s fun because it’s onstage, and poignant because they’re all wearing masks, and boy, we won’t forget THIS era of safety-first ballet in the years and decades to come, will we?

Now here’s who you’ll be able to watch  (and note that this list is still evolving and subject to change)

Oceania

  • The Australian Ballet
  • Queensland Ballet
  • Royal New Zealand Ballet
  • West Australian Ballet

Asia

  • Bangkok City Ballet
  • Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan
  • Hong Kong Ballet
  • Korean National Ballet
  • The National Ballet of Japan
  • Singapore Dance Theatre

Europe

  • Bolshoi Ballet
  • Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris
  • Barcelona Ballet
  • Bayerisches Staatsballett
  • Birmingham Royal Ballet
  • Dutch National Ballet
  • English National Ballet
  • Estonian National Ballet
  • Finnish National Ballet
  • Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing
  • La Scala Ballet
  • Mariinsky Theatre
  • Norwegian National Ballet
  • Opera Sofia
  • Perm Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre
  • Polish National Ballet
  • Northern Ballet
  • Royal Academy of Dance
  • The Royal Ballet
  • Scottish Ballet
  • Staatsballet Berlin
  • Stuttgart Ballet
  • The Mikhailovsky Theatre
  • The Royal Danish Ballet
  • Ural Opera Ballet Theatre
  • Vienna State Ballet

Africa

  • Cape Town City Ballet
  • Joburg Ballet

North America

  • Acosta Danza
  • Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
  • American Ballet Theatre
  • Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico
  • Ballet de Monterrey
  • Ballet Nacional de Cuba
  • Boston Ballet
  • Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal

South America

  • São Paulo Dance Company

And now about those times. The World Ballet Day website has thoughtfully provided all the times for the above guest companies, so if you go to their site HERE, you’ll find that all-important information.

Stop 1 is Melbourne and The Australian Ballet. When the world-wide event kicks off at 12 noon in Melbourne on Tuesday, October 19th, it looks like this for the rest of the time zones:

  • Moscow          4am Tue Oct 19
  • UTC/GMT*     1am Tue Oct 19
  • London            2am Tue Oct 19
  • New York        9pm Mon Oct 18
  • San Francisco 6pm Mon Oct 18

*In case you’re scratching your head, “UTC” is what Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is now called. It stands for “Universal Time Coordinated” and, at this time of the year, it is the same time as London.

Stop 2 is Moscow and Bolshoi Ballet on Tuesday at 10am local time, which looks like this for the rest:

  • Melbourne      6pm
  • UTC/GMT       7am
  • London            8am
  • New York        3am
  • San Francisco  Midnight

Stop 3 is London and The Royal Ballet. The Royal Ballet’s 11am start looks like this for the rest:

  • UTC/GMT       12 noon
  • Melbourne      10pm
  • Moscow           1pm
  • New York        6am
  • San Francisco  3am

In early August, I published the text below, which, happily, is not very important anymore. But the comments below will make more sense if you know what I first wrote…

Will there be a World Ballet Day livestream event in 2021? You might think it curious of me, dear reader, to lead with such an inconclusive question. You probably came here expecting answers, certainty. After all, there’s a Facebook page already out there, which has already asserted that yes, there is a World Ballet Day in 2021, and it’s Friday, October 1st.

THIS IS FALSE. This is an unauthorized group promoting an unauthorized day for an event they do not run. I won’t share the link to the page because of its spam-like nature, but let me give you an example: (And how many grammatical errors and typos can you find?)

“World Ballet Day in 2021 is on the Friday, 1st of Oct.World most famous Event.Join us our event and share now page/event.”

So. Ignore that. But pay close attention to this: I’m thrilled that, just like last year, after I’d posted a “boo hoo, no World Ballet Day this year” blog, an official day was finally announced. So. {{Clears throat, taps mic…}}

World Ballet Day 2021 is October 19th, and it’s OFFICIAL!

7 thoughts on “World Ballet Day 2021: Who and When”

  1. Wow! I would never expect anyone to be so nefarious as to create a fake World Ballet Day FB page. Truly what is their purpose? I suppose the most apparent reason would be to access individual’s FB pages as they click on the fake-links?? Wow. How sneaky!

    Reply
  2. I know, Donna, right? Incredibly sneaky. I don’t, however, think it’s nefarious. They’re just like parasites that rely on a living organism to grow and get bigger. They are a nothing outfit and they have a brand, or merely a handful of wanna-be websites, that they are trying to garner increased exposure for. You can tell, by the lousy English, that they are non-English-speaking nationals. I get a lot of spam from Bangladesh, Russian Federation, China, Singapore, and the one time this site got hacked, it was an outfit from Japan (this one WAS nefarious).

    So, there you have it. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It sure did piss me off, though, to think they almost had me believing the event and FB page was real. That’s why I wanted to alert everyone.

    Reply
  3. Wow, I’m glad I checked here for the time. Pointe Magazine said it started at 7pm and I thought I’d double-check here because this is where I came last year. And it’s already started!

    Thank you, Classical Girl, for giving us the right start time! (I love watching barre and company class – I would have hated to miss this.)

    Reply
  4. Ha ha, you’re welcome, Gina! I’ve been nervous about that mistake on Pointe Magazine’s part, thinking I must have been the one to get it wrong. Nope! (But I was sure glad to see The Australian Ballet start up promptly at 6pm here on the West Coast.)

    I think the mistake is that they were thinking we in the U.S. are on Standard time and not Daylight Savings. Wrong-o!

    Now off I go to watch that delicious company class. I, too, absolutely love the class portion.

    Reply

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