Celebrities Join Royal Opera House For Biggest World Ballet Day Ever

The Royal Ballet's contribution to this year's World Ballet Day, streamed across the world via Facebook Live, received the largest number of online views in the event's five year history, with 197,000 live views, up 56% on World Ballet Day 2017.

113.5m people engaged with #WorldBalletDay and thousands of people shared a photograph of themselves performing a pirouette on the day. The fifth World Ballet Day trended on Twitter in the UK throughout the day.

The annual celebration of dance, which took place on 2 October 2018, involved the largest number of ballet companies in its history, with 29 participating companies from 18 countries across the world, with The Australian Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet and The Royal Ballet taking part in three consecutive live streams.

The day of live-streamed events provided viewers around the world with an exclusive look behind the scenes at what life is like at the world's top ballet companies, giving audiences the chance to see the athleticism and dedication it takes to be a member of the world's top ballet companies.

Former Rugby internationals Thom Evans, Max Evans and BBC actor Jake Wood also took part, experiencing the training, rigour and dedication required to be a ballet dancer and took part in a ballet class run by Principal Character Artist of The Royal Ballet, Bennett Gartside with support from choreographer Arlene Phillips.

Jake Wood tweeted:

"So apparently I have ballet dancers feet! Thanks so much @TheRoyalBallet @RoyalOperaHouse for an incredible morning, didn't realise so much went into creating each production..97 dancers, fitness suite, physios, psychologists! Oh, and my pirouettes were terrible #WorldBalletDay"

The Royal Ballet's contribution to Word Ballet Day is now available to watch in full by following this link.

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