1996 – ballet.co website launched

With the proliferation of internet users during the 1990s, in 1996 Bruce Marriott established ballet.co as an online forum to give ballet audiences a space to talk and exchange views about what they were watching in theatres. The following year, this forum began to operate as an internet magazine that incorporated a photography gallery showing the dance pieces that were currently on stages in Britain. The enterprise generated a strong following and became the website dancetabs.com in 2012. This iteration had an international scope and featured high quality content written by established dance writers, though the website still invited feedback and participation from dance lovers. Marriott’s forum recognized a shift in how people consume dance, in some ways democratising and bringing people closer into the world of ballet. It was an answer to the mood of the late 1990s that ballet was elitist and its appreciation too sophisticated for general tastes. Bruce Marriott’s forum anticipated the social media landscape of contemporary times.