“Everyone is at least a dormant ballet nerd,” declares 22-year-old Eden Lim, while sitting for an interview in the suburban Dallas studio where she and her sister, Jordan, 24, film and edit their popular YouTube channel “Ballet Reign.”
Judging from the near-universal backlash to Timothée Chalamet’s recent bad-mouthing of ballet, Eden’s summation of the central tenet of their show may be true. With 67,000 subscribers in 166 countries and growing, the Lim sisters are mixing Gen Z humor and exuberance with astounding erudition to bring ballet to a new generation and fire up older, longtime fans.
With episode titles such as “Addictive Ballet Moments to Alter your Brain Chemistry” and promises like “This will increase your lifespan and double your morale,” they are on a mission to ensure that ballet not only survives but thrives.
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Mirthfulness is the Lim sisters’ medium, but their message is serious. During each show, they parse video clips of great performances, often by explaining the history of the piece and giving detailed behind-the-scenes stories. They dissect the most famous pas de deux with trenchant insight and introduce their audience to the greatest dancers, including Natalia Osipova and Roberto Bolle. With signature, irrepressible enthusiasm, the sisters help viewers see precisely what makes the shows and dancers so extraordinary.
Eden, left, and Jordan Lim of YouTube channel “Ballet Reign” trained as professional dancers before deciding to focus on their show full time.
(Larsen & Talbert / For The Times)
A video clip featured in the “Addictive Ballet” episode shows New York City Ballet principal dancer Ashley Bouder launching herself into a jeté so high she seems to leave Earth’s gravity. In midair she manages to turn herself 180 degrees before being caught by her partner, despite her momentum seeming to drift into his arms like a feather blown by a breeze.
While watching the singular feat, Eden exclaims, “Call the news channels! We found a person who can actually levitate!”
Jordan says the goal is to make viewers feel equipped to say, “I understand what’s going on, and I can appreciate it, and I can appreciate that this was done well.”
“Ballet Reign” launched three years ago with modest hopes. The sisters sought a mere toehold in the YouTube universe, aiming for a narrow niche audience of fellow ballet fanatics (“ballet nerds”) ages 16 to 25. To their initial astonishment, they have attracted a far wider viewership spanning all ages, even followers who hitherto had only scant interest in ballet. They have drawn in many young children and older adults, with those 65 and up now their third-largest subscriber group.
The show has rapidly won acclaim from within and outside of the ballet world — perhaps because the depth and breadth of their knowledge makes it hard to shake the suspicion that they secretly are Ivy League professors.
The Lim sisters speak with sophistication about classic ballets and dancers they love — delivering their message through a whimsical show that has attracted fans of all ages.
(Larsen & Talbert / For The Times)
They comment with equal sophistication on ballet steps, choreography, history, musicology and the minute details of costume design. Eclectic references pop out of nowhere — a metaphor from quantum physics, an aside that the flute is the instrument whose sound is closest to a sine wave, that a serinette is an 18th century music box used to teach caged canaries to sing.
Even actual professors laud the show.
Nicolas Krusek routinely shows “Ballet Reign” episodes in his classes for adults on ballet history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Krusek says what makes the show compelling “is the spirit of the videos, just the sense of joyousness and benevolence that they communicate, and a real sense of reverence for the art and the artists.”
John Meehan, a Vassar College professor of ballet and former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, calls their episode on Igor Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” ballet “amazing,” adding that it conveys at least as much information in much more palatable form than a “dry” university lecture.
Julie Cronshaw, director of the Highgate Ballet School in London, says even for learned, longtime balletomanes the show opens up a whole new realm of understanding and appreciation. For those weighed down by adult concerns, watching an episode leaves them feeling uplifted.
This is why Jordan believes “Ballet Reign” has attracted a significant older audience — and also because the sisters honor tradition.
“They’re looking at the content and saying, ‘These are pieces that I grew up watching. And these are the dancers that I adored when I was younger,’” Jordan says.
Eden says she hopes “it’s because our content, and the way we deliver it, is able to touch hearts.”
The Lim sisters keep a disciplined schedule, turning out polished, deftly produced episodes 52 weeks a year.
(Larsen & Talbert / For The Times)
The show also benefits from its high production values, with expertly edited clips from performances, clever blurbs of text and quirky cutaways to, say, a pole vaulter as an allusion to how high a dancer jumps.
Episodes generally begin the same way, with the sisters sitting behind a table with an old-fashioned radio-days microphone nicknamed “Mike-elangelo” between them. Eden kicks things off by announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ballet Reign.”
A flash of superimposed text identifies them as “*Very certified*, extremely serious ballet experts.”
Jordan and Eden revel in each other’s company, finish each other’s sentences and play off each other with insightful or witty interjections.
“We grew up best friends from the beginning, and that’s never changed,” Jordan says.
They keep a disciplined, grueling schedule, turning out polished, deftly produced episodes 52 weeks a year.
Comments validating their efforts come in frequently. “You really helped me through a dark time,” reads one. Another notes, “I was going through a really difficult life transition and having your videos helped me get through.”
Jordan says, “That’s a sort of impact that I genuinely did not see coming.”
The sisters are openhearted and enjoy revealing ballet’s best-kept secrets, but they have kept a remarkably mysterious online profile. Until now, they have never even disclosed their last names, let alone anything about their background, education or experience.
There is also nearly nothing on the internet, and fans have long wondered about their credentials, including whether they are professional dancers themselves.
On the show the sisters certainly come across as if they were. Surprisingly, the answer is no — with an “almost” caveat.
The oldest of four siblings, Jordan and Eden spent nearly all of their childhood in Ottawa. From the time they were small the sisters beelined toward becoming professional ballet dancers. Jordan says when she was 4 she got up at the crack of dawn every day and put in a VHS tape of a ballet class that her mother, Mary Lim, had bought. With fierce determination, she performed tendus and relevés along with the older students on the tape.
Eden’s ballet fascination quickly followed. Mary says she soon realized she had no choice but to send them to ballet school.
“Obviously, if you look at a 4-year-old doing ballet at 7 a.m. every single day, you’re like, OK, let’s try lessons,” Jordan says.
Eden, left, and Jordan Lim of “Ballet Reign” are the oldest of four siblings and spent nearly all of their childhood in Ottawa before relocating to Texas to pursue their careers.
(Larsen & Talbert / For The Times)
By 2015, the girls needed a better ballet school than was available in Ottawa. Their parents packed up the family and moved to Dallas, where the pair enrolled in the Ballet Academy of Texas. Aside from ballet classes they were entirely homeschooled, but they had plenty of experience dancing in school performances, ballet competitions and with real companies.
Mary says the intent was “to give them an opportunity to move and carve their own path … We wanted them to find their passions.”
The moment the sisters had worked for all their lives arrived in 2020, when the time came to set off around the country — and the world — to audition for ballet companies. But the COVID-19 pandemic hit just as they got started, and almost everything in the ballet world shut down.
Jordan says the hiatus led them to reflect for the first time on whether their lifelong ambition was truly what they wanted. At the same time they groped for a way to put their passion for ballet to temporary use.
For years the sisters had fantasized, half-seriously, about having their own YouTube channel. Eden convinced an initially reluctant Jordan it was time to make the daydream real, and “Ballet Reign” premiered on Dec. 21, 2022.
The sisters say they convinced themselves they were using the show to take “a gap year” while waiting out the pandemic. As the first months passed, and their audience widened and sent glowing feedback, they began to realize they were having a big impact and touching lives. It dawned on them that this wasn’t just an interlude but their calling.
In an agonizing twist, just as the show had gotten underway, Jordan received word she had been accepted by a professional ballet company. She turned down the offer.
“It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make,” Jordan says, but in retrospect the right one.
On a night when my family watched Austin Reaves pull off the miraculous intentional missed free throw put-back basket on the way to a thrilling Laker overtime win against the Denver Nuggets, we talked more about the newest Lakers super fan on the way home. Kudos to Bill Plaschke for recognizing and capturing the power of 6-year-old Jackson Tuyay’s passionate cheering that helped ignite the laid-back crowd and inspire the Lakers to a huge comeback win. As a lifelong Laker fan since the same age as Jackson it was so awesome to see such innocent and authentic passion for the Lakers. In an arena full of stars in the stands and on the court it was the voice of a 6-year-old that reminded us how awesome it is to be a Lakers fan for life!
Paul Stapleton Los Angeles
To quote Jackson Tuyay, “Yeaaaaah!” It looks like the Lakers can play some defense and beat the better teams after all.
Vaughn Hardenberg Westwood
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The village has been crowned the world’s most beautiful by Forbes and receives 20,000 visitors on weekends – but overtourism has caused serious problems
The council has decided action must be taken (Image: Snowshill via Getty Images)
A UK village crowned the most beautiful in the world has moved forward in the fight against overtourism, with a huge cash boost and a raft of new potential measures.
Bibury, nestled in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds, is an undeniably charming spot. It boasts honey-hued stone cottages, a gently winding river, and a historic, fairytale-like atmosphere. Its allure led Forbes to name it the world’s most attractive village for 2025, approximately 150 years after poet William Morris declared Bibury “the most beautiful village in England.”
The cottages of Arlington Row are often hailed as the most photographed and breathtaking cottages in Britain. Built in 1380 as a monastic wool store, it was later converted into a row of weavers’ cottages in the 17th century.
It’s easy to see why Bibury garners such accolades, with accommodation options like the Swan Hotel and The Catherine Wheel pub both welcoming inside and festooned with climbing plants outside. The village’s charm has put Bibury firmly on the tourist trail. And now, some locals say, things are getting out of hand.
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Chairman of the local parking action group, Mark Honeyball, who has resided in Bibury for a decade, has had some rather unpleasant experiences with visitors. He revealed to the Express that he asked a coach driver to move on from some double yellow lines before drama unfolded.
He said last year: “I’ve been physically attacked four times now, but once really quite badly two weeks ago, I was kicked in the chest and stomach and kneed and punched in the face full force by a driver that I’d just asked simply to move on from double yellows at the top of the village.
“The coach drivers themselves are being pushed here by their coach companies, they don’t really want to be here, they find it really difficult to park. The tour operators are the key behind this, the coach operators are doing what the tour operators ask them to do, primarily with people from China, India, and South Korea at the moment.”
Up to 20,000 tourists flood into Bibury over weekends in the high season, with as many as 50 coaches arriving daily. That’s a staggering number for a village home to merely 600 residents.
Following the period of consultation, the county council is considering a series of measures to control the impact of tourism. They include:
Permanent removal of coach parking bays and implementation of on-street parking restrictions.
Additional enforcement of parking restrictions.
Introducing pay-and-display parking.
Restricting coach parking/waiting using enforcement officers to support traffic flow.
Exploring if there are improvements that can be made to local bus services including options such as park and ride.
Restrictions on coaches entering the village were implemented in May last year. At that point, parking bays in the heart of the village were shut and new public bus stop clearways were established. The objective was to put a stop to “unsafe coach manoeuvres.” Following the summer trial period, Gloucestershire County Council decided to implement permanent restrictions on coaches entering the area.
Cllr Lisa Spivey, leader of the county council, said: “Hopefully we are getting somewhere. We did a trial last year which has been extended where we essentially removed the coach parking bays in the centre of the village and created drop off and pick up points for coaches, so we are now going to make that a more permanent solution.
“They have currently got some red and white plastic barriers which don’t look very nice in a historic village so we want to make that look nice. We are going to introduce pay and display parking so we can pay for more enforcement to make sure people aren’t parking where they shouldn’t be and causing an issue.
“We’ve been working alongside the coach operators and other stakeholders to really encourage the use of smaller vehicles to come into the village. There’s been a huge amount of engagement with the coach operators, Cotswold Tourism, the parish council, businesses, the police etc. Lots of people have been involved.”
