SAB’s Summer Social Media Scavenger Hunt Answer Key

This summer, the School of American Ballet decided to try something a little different across our social channels for the month of July. We held an interactive scavenger hunt on the SAB Instagram with daily clues and weekly challenges. Participants had to scan our posts and put their knowledge of pointe shoes, class structure, ballet variations, and SAB history to the test. Each successfully completed challenge earned participants another entry into a raffle for a special SAB prize pack.

Our ultimate goal for this game was to bring together our virtual community in an interactive way, while also showing off the amazing dancing happening in our studios over the span of our five-week Summer Course. But the participation across our student body, alumni network, followers, and supporters was so much more than we could have anticipated. We were blown away! Thank you to everyone who signed up and joined in the scavenger hunt. We hope you had as much fun as we did!

In case anyone was stumped by some of our questions and challenges, we’ve put together this handy answer key to cap off the hunt and quell any confusion or curiosity. Scroll down for the answers to all our clues and questions!

Week One: Makers Marks

For the first week of the scavenger hunt, we hid one, tiny, slightly transparent graphic of a Freed of London’s Maker symbol in each photo we posted. As you may know, Freed pointe shoes are all made by hand, and each individual maker denotes their work with a specific symbol, stamped into the bottom of the shoes. By taking the first letter of the official name of each hidden Freed Maker’s mark, and adding the letter E to the end, Scavenger Hunt participants unlocked a secret, five-letter password they had to send to SAB through direct message. The secret word? DANCE! There was a bit of a curve ball with the symbol posted on Thursday. While it was a treble clef, the official Freed name for that maker is simply “Clef.” Congratulations to everyone who solved this first puzzle!

Week Two: One is Unlike the Others

In the second week of our Summer Scavenger Hunt, we posted four photos during the week highlighting our fabulous Summer Course students in their technique classes – three had one distinct thing in common and one was the odd one out. Admittedly, this may have been the most challenging week, as not only did people spot all kinds of variations, but the final weekly question involved deciphering a riddle and doing some math. (Our apologies to everyone who found this week frustrating!)

The odd photo out was #3 – it was the only photo from center and not taken at the barre. Then, to get the final answer, you had to total up the number of students across all four photos – which is 7 – and then add that to the number on the odd photo out – 3 – giving you an answer of 10! Despite the confusion, over 200 of you got the correct answer. Well done!

Week Three – A Variety of Variations

Week three was definitely our favorite challenge of the Scavenger Hunt, as we got to show off our Summer Course students in their weekly variations classes! Each day, we posted a series of photos or a video montage from a particular class and it was up to you to decipher what variation was being taught. All in all, our participants pretty much smashed this challenge. You definitely know your ballets! Scroll down to see what each ballet was for each post…

George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® – Waltz of the Flowers

Concerto Barocco

Swan Lake

George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® – Marzipan

Jerome Robbins’s The Four Seasons: Spring

And of course, we couldn’t finish the week without a bonus question. Of the four ballets shared, two of them – Swan Lake and The Nutcracker – use music composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tschaikovsky. Kudos to those who snagged this bonus point!

Week Four – Spot the Summer Course Alumni

To close out the Scavenger Hunt and celebrate the remarkable legacy of the SAB Summer Course, the final week featured snapshots from the SAB archives of alumni of the School when they were at the Summer Course. From ballet company members, current principal dancers, broadway stars, teachers, choreographers, filmmakers, and even a podcasting professional, we loved highlighting these former SAB students! Your challenge was to name as many as you could identify, and many of you did just that with ease! Here’s the rundown of the ten featured alumni…

But of course, we had to finish this hunt with some true scavenging of the SAB Instagram feed. On the final day of Summer Course, we left a clue in the photo of SAB faculty member Meaghan Dutton O’Hara as a student. Did you spot it? This was the beginning of a final quest…

The first clue said: “Look at the pinned comment on the Instagram post from March 4 to get your next clue!”

Which led you to this post where a pinned comment read:
“You found the first clue, well done! Now scan our past Instagram Reels to find our video interview with legendary ballerina and SAB alumna Suzanne Farrell to obtain the next clue in the pinned comment.”

That should have brought you to this reel, where the pinned comment reads:
“Your search paid off! Watch the video above to discover how many stitches Suzanne Farrell would sew into her pointe shoe ribbons and go to the Instagram post published on that number day of this past April to unlock your next clue, pinned to the top of the comments!”

In the video, Ms. Farrell shares that she would use 29 stitches to sew her pointe shoe ribbons, which led you to this post on April 29. The final clue pinned in the comments reads:
“You’re almost to the finish line! In this video post, faculty member Suki Schorer is speaking about the School’s co-founder George Balanchine. What was the first ballet he choreographed after coming to the United States, set on the inaugural class of SAB advanced students in 1934? Send us a Direct Message with the name of the ballet and you will have completed our Summer Scavenger Hunt!”

The final answer? Serenade! We were so pleased to see over 50 people found all the clues and messaged us with this correct answer.

And just like that, our Summer Scavenger Hunt came to a close! We had so much fun putting together this month-long game and we hope you enjoyed playing along. We received over 2500 entrees and wish we could select more than one winner – you all did such an amazing job! But in the end we put all the eligible names into a random generator, spun the wheel and selected our grand prize winner…

Charley from British Columbia!

We’ll be in touch to coordinate your prize shipping! Thanks again to all our participants in the inaugural SAB Summer Scavenger Hunt!