Timothée Chalamet, ballet and some strong social media pirouetting

The worlds of Ballet and Opera erupted on social media this weekend, following a punchy statement from Timothee Chalamet about a lack of interest in these arts. 

In February, Timothee Chalamet and Matthew McConaughey spoke to a live audience at The University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Communication for the Variety & CNN Town Hall. In a conversation discussing efforts to preserve cinema, Timmy made a fairly flippant comment…

"I don't want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it's like, 'Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore.'

But, London institutes (and many all over the world) have used this statement as an opportunity to propel themselves - albeit maybe unintentionally - to new audiences.

The Royal Ballet School has generated over 800K views in less than 24 hours (making it their most successful post of all time) and The Royal Ballet and Opera House have even invited Timothee to a show to reconsider, along with 2M other users. 

Google searches around terms related to opera and ballet have increased - ballet london tickets 7%, philadelphia ballet 130%, american theatre ballet tickets 70%. 

Using reactive content, in this example to get in front of a new audience in an interesting way has proved successful - sometimes the opportunities create themselves, but reacting to them interestingly is how you win.

This all being said, when the world’s elite dance institutions' best-ever posts are a) in response to critique and b) do 20% of what Timothee’s famous Girlfriend gets on posts about a new product, it shows the challenge isn't just to grab this moment, but how to sustain the interest longer term to build a next-generation audience.

The next step, for Timmy, ballet & opera? Front row tickets for Kylie and him at the Nutcracker - to show everyone is friends again 💚