The Australian Ballet School and the New Zealand School of Dance will join leading ballet schools and institutions from around the globe in the inaugural World Ballet School Day, which will be streamed online from 9pm AEST (7PM AWST, 8.30pm ACST) Tuesday 7 July.
The twelve schools/institutions include the likes of the Royal Ballet School, the Paris Opera Ballet School and the Prix de Lausanne.
World Ballet School Day (WBSD) connects the next generation of young professional dance artists and young people from around the world. Students from participating schools will join together in a round table to provide insights into the world of professional ballet and dance training, especially during lockdown. There will be segments from each school featuring behind the scenes and performance footage filmed both before and during lockdown.
World Ballet School Day will also feature the world premiere of a new dance work. Six international ballet schools worked with choreographer Didy Veldman to explore the theme of physical restriction in a project led by the Royal Ballet School. The Royal Ballet School invited San Francisco Ballet School, Canada’s National Ballet School, Paris Opera Ballet School, the Royal Danish Ballet School and the Dutch National Ballet Academy to join them in a creative choreographic challenge for ballet students in lockdown. The dancers worked in six groups and created and rehearsed with Veldman over Zoom. The students then filmed their individual performances, and Veldman and The BalletBoyz have created a film containing their work.
World Ballet School Day will be streamed from https://www.worldballetschoolday.com/ and will be available for catch-up for a month.
Pictured top are students from the Australian Ballet School (picture 1) and the New Zealand School of Dance (picture 2).