How the catalog is built
Ballet Records is a curated index of ballet performance videos. We do not host any video ourselves — every clip is streamed from its original provider, and we store only a link and the details that describe it. This page explains where those videos come from and how they are chosen, so it is clear what the archive does and does not cover.
What we catalog
The catalog focuses on classically-grounded ballet in two forms:
- Full performances — complete works, from full-length story ballets to plotless and contemporary pieces, and full gala or mixed-programme recordings.
- Named excerpts — any distinct, named segment of a work: a solo variation, pas de deux, coda, adagio, or grand pas.
Modern and contemporary dance that falls outside a classical ballet vocabulary is intentionally out of scope.
Where videos come from
We start from a curated list of trusted YouTube channels rather than searching the whole platform. Each source is rated by how authoritative it is, which feeds into how much we trust its uploads:
- Ballet companies — official channels of the world’s major companies (highest trust): Royal Ballet and Opera, Paris Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Dutch National Ballet, Mariinsky, New York City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, The Australian Ballet, English National Ballet, Bolshoi, Houston Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Boston Ballet, Staatsballett Berlin, Hamburg Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Vienna State Ballet, St Petersburg Ballet Theatre, Mikhailovsky, Royal Danish Theatre, Bayerische Staatsoper, Korean National Ballet, National Ballet of China, and Teatro Colón.
- Festivals & competitions — Prix de Lausanne, Youth America Grand Prix, Vail Dance Festival, and the Varna International Ballet Competition.
- Archives & distributors — specialist channels that re-publish historic and licensed recordings (corroborated before being trusted): tenretnit, TheTompkinsBalletLibrary, NotasdeBallet, OpusArte, EuroArts, the Petipa Ballet Association, TheBalletGallery, Pathé Live, TheBunduBallerina, and Sebastian Deka.
Know a channel we’re missing? Suggest a source
What we leave out
A channel holds far more than performances, so we filter its uploads down to genuine performance footage. The following are deliberately excluded because they are not a performance:
- Masterclasses, classes, tutorials, and training or barre footage
- Trailers, teasers, previews, and promotional clips
- Interviews, talks, podcasts, panels, and Q&As
- Documentaries, behind-the-scenes, rehearsals, and vlogs
- Auditions, fundraiser galas, award ceremonies, and season announcements
- Curtain calls, bows, and audience-reaction clips
Standard-definition recordings are not excluded — a performance available only in older, lower-quality footage still earns its place; higher-quality copies simply rank above it.
How a video is classified
Every video that survives filtering is checked against our catalog of works, variations, choreographers, companies, and dancers, using its title, description, and playlist. Each one is classified as a full performance or a named excerpt, and given two judgements:
This classification step is performed by a large language model (LLM) — specifically Claude, built by Anthropic. For each video, the model is given the title, description, and playlist name, and asked to identify the work, variation, choreographer, company, and cast, then state how confident it is. It does not watch the footage — every judgement is based on the text a channel publishes, which is why unclear or conflicting text is routed to a human reviewer rather than guessed at.
- Completeness — how much we know about it (work, variation, company, cast, year).
- Confidence — how sure we are of which work and variation it is, and that it is genuinely classical ballet.
Nothing is published automatically
These judgements decide what happens next. Videos we are confident and well-informed about are queued to be added; anything ambiguous — the work is known but the exact excerpt is not, or the details conflict — goes to a review queue for a person to check by hand. Videos that are out of scope or too uncertain are set aside and can be reconsidered later. A human reviews the queue before anything appears on the site, which is one reason coverage grows gradually.
Who moderates the catalog
Every video is reviewed by hand before it appears here. The people currently curating and moderating the catalog are:
- Sascha Lamme — maintainer
Interested in joining? You can apply to help curate & moderate.