Haivision Powers Live Video Streaming for International Ballet Festival

(03/05/2013) Haivision's Mako and KulaByte Encoders Selected by Ryerson University to Deliver High Quality Video for Live Streaming of Simultaneous Choreography Between Dancers in Amsterdam and Toronto

Haivision is partnering with Canada's National Ballet School (NBS) and the Global Campus Network at Ryerson University to provide live video streaming for the performances of the original work entitled Stream at the Assembl e Internationale 2013 (AI 13), to be held in Toronto, Canada on May 3rd and 4th.

A week-long international festival hosted by Canada's National Ballet School (NBS), AI 13 is taking place from April 28 to May 4 in Toronto. It brings together students and artistic staff from eleven countries and eighteen international professional ballet schools (including The Juilliard School, Cuba's National Ballet School, Paris Opera Ballet School and the San Francisco Ballet School) for intensive classes, performances, forums, and professional development.

The festival includes four public performances, culminating with two performances that incorporate live video streaming of dance students from the Dutch National Ballet Academy, Amsterdam and AI 13 students in Toronto. The performance, created by NBS choreographer Shaun Amyot, in collaboration with Amsterdam-based choreographer, Michael Schumacher, is a new work titled Stream. Performed by a blended cast of AI 13 students present in Toronto and joined virtually through the live video streaming of dancers from the Dutch National Ballet Academy in Amsterdam, Amyot and Schumacher's work explores the use of new technologies in dance.

The Global Campus Network is coordinating the event technology and is using Haivision's Mako , a high performance, low-latency video codec technology designed for interactive communications, to bi-directionally stream live video and audio of dancers on location at the Dutch National Ballet Academy onto onstage screens in Toronto. In addition, Haivision's KulaByte Internet encoder/transcoder technology, is being used to stream these live events to Internet audiences on the AI 13 website on May 3rd from 2:00-4:00pm EST and May 4th from 12:00-2:00pm EST.

Usually when ballet students are brought together, it is for competition, but the Assembl e Internationale festival is very unique because it is focused on collaboration. It provides our students with a real opportunity to network with their peers, meet with artistic directors from other ballet schools and become stronger dancers by working together. Haivision's video streaming technology is helping us realize the goal of bringing our dancers closer together, both on the stage and online, said Amyot, Stream choreographer, Canada's National Ballet School.

The Global Campus Network is an alliance focused on developing new methods of creating live interactive and culturally diverse media across the world's universities and colleges, said Richard Grunberg, director of Ryerson Digital Cinema and the Advanced Visualization Lab & Global Campus Network. We partnered with Haivision to leverage online video solutions that were reliable, ultra low latency and high quality to make the AI 13 Stream performance a reality.

The synchronization and timing needed to have dancers perform together flawlessly from two different locations, on one stage requires the lowest latency video stream possible and Haivision's codec technology is enabling the simultaneous performance and collaboration in real-time, said JoAnne Gaudreau, vice president of marketing at Haivision. When art and technology come together, you're creating something truly innovative and demonstrating the power of video to drive collaboration, whether it be in a learning or enterprise environment.

To watch Stream performances online, please visit Assembl e Internationale at: http://www.nbs-enb.ca/ai13/

About Haivision

Haivision delivers advanced technology for streaming, recording, managing, and distributing secure IP video and interactive media within the enterprise, education, medical/healthcare, and federal/military markets. Haivision is a private company based in Montreal and Chicago, with technical excellence centers in Beaverton, Ore.; Austin, Texas; Atlanta, Ga.; and Hamburg, Germany. With a global sales and support organization, Haivision distributes its products through value-added resellers, system integrators, distributors, and OEMs worldwide.

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