About Ballet Records
This catalog brings together as many ballet videos as we can find. Today they are spread across hundreds of channels under all sorts of titles. Ballet Records organises them by ballet, by number and by dancer, so that any of them is a few clicks away whether or not you know what it is called.
We hope it does a little more than that. Most people know a handful of ballets by name; there are a great many more. If someone comes here to look one thing up and leaves enthusiastic about a ballet they had not known, and perhaps curious to see it on stage, the site is doing what it was made for.
What we do is collect and sort. Each recording plays from the channel that published it, and what this catalog adds is the description: which ballet, which number, which company, which dancers, and when.
The rest is a site worth browsing. Follow a ballet down through its numbers, watch the same variation danced by four different companies, or begin with a dancer or a choreographer and see everything of theirs we have found. It is meant for anyone who wants to look properly: dancers learning a role, teachers, students, newcomers looking for a way in, and audiences who would like to know a little more than the programme tells them.
What the catalog holds
Dancing grounded in classical ballet. The test is the vocabulary, not the period: a contemporary or neoclassical work belongs here if it is built on classical technique, and work that is not falls outside the catalog.
Recordings are held at three scales:
- A complete work, danced from beginning to end. A full gala or mixed programme is treated as one.
- A grand pas, suite or act, where several numbers were filmed together as one continuous recording.
- A single named number: a variation, pas de deux, coda or adagio.
Picture quality is not a condition. A performance that survives only as a poor recording is still worth listing.
What is left out
A ballet channel publishes far more than performances, and only the performances are catalogued. Left out:
- Classes, masterclasses, tutorials, and barre or training footage
- Trailers, teasers, previews, and promotional clips
- Interviews, talks, podcasts, panels, and Q&As
- Documentaries, behind-the-scenes features, rehearsals, and vlogs
- Auditions, fundraising galas, award ceremonies, and season announcements
- Curtain calls, bows, and audience reactions
Where the recordings come from
A set list of channels rather than YouTube at large: the companies themselves, the major festivals and competitions, and a few specialist archives that republish historic recordings. The better established the channel, the more we rely on what it says about its own recordings.
If we have missed a channel, please tell us. Suggest a source
The role of AI
A single channel can hold several thousand videos, and each one has to be looked at before it can be catalogued. AI does that first pass. What it does, and what it does not do, is worth setting out clearly.
It does the following:
- It reads what the channel wrote about a recording: the title, the description and the playlist it sits in, and nothing else.
- It suggests whether the recording is a performance, which ballet it is, whether it is complete or an excerpt, which number, and which company, year and dancers are named.
- It says when it cannot tell. It has to give its reasoning before its answer, and “unclear” is a proper answer that sends the recording to a person.
It does not do the following:
- It does not watch the recording. It knows nothing about the dancing and is never asked to judge it.
- It does not write the catalog. Ballet titles, the structure of a work and the names of its numbers come from research, and it can only point to entries that already exist. It cannot add a variation that is not in the ballet.
- It does not publish. Nothing it suggests reaches the site on its own.
Review
Every recording is checked by a person before it is listed, and anything the first pass left unclear is looked at more closely. A good deal is corrected at this stage, and a good deal is set aside.
This is the slow step, and the reason the catalog grows gradually. It is a deliberate choice of accuracy over volume. If an entry is wrong anyway, the report link beneath the recording is the most direct way to say so, and those reports are acted on.
Current state
The catalog is incomplete. Some ballets have a handful of recordings and others none at all, casts and dates are missing in places, and entries are still moved as research settles them. The project is run in personal time, so progress is uneven.
Anyone who knows ballet and would like to help is welcome to get in touch.