 |
 2009/2010 Season Announcement
|
|
|
FOR RELEASE ON CONTACT: SHAUNA TYSOR
AUGUST 11, 2009 KIM ESPINOSA
713 535 3226
email us
HOUSTON BALLET ANNOUNCES
2009-2010 SEASON
40th Anniversary Season includes Six New Works
World Premiere of Stanton Welch's Full-Length Ballet La Bayadère
with Lavish New Sets and Costumes by English Designer Peter Farmer
Highlights Season in February 2010
Works by Balanchine, Kylián, Robbins, and Tharp
Enter Company Repertoirest
Houston, Texas - Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch has announced the company's 2009-2010 season, marking the company's fortieth anniversary. Six news works enter the repertoire, including a lavish new full-length version of the 19th century classic La Bayadère, Houston Ballet's first-ever staging of the full-length version of this work. The company premiere of In The Upper Room will be the first work by Twyla Tharp, one of America's most celebrated dance makers and director of the Broadway hit Movin' Out, to enter Houston Ballet's repertory. Mr. Welch continues to enlarge the company's repertory with some of the most brilliant international choreographers of our time (including George Balanchine, Jiří Kylián, and Jerome Robbins) and to create new works for Houston Ballet.
"It's a really exciting year," says artistic director Stanton Welch, who also turns 40 in October 2009, and has revitalized the company since assuming its directorship in July 2003. "There's a real variety of styles and emotions. I'm proud that our productions will continue to be world-class as we introduce new works to Houston Ballet's repertoire and create world premieres."
On February 17, 1969, a troupe of 15 young dancers made its stage debut at Sam Houston State Teacher's College in Huntsville, Texas. Since that time, Houston Ballet has evolved into a company of 53 dancers with a budget of over $20 million, a state-of-the-art performance space built especially for the company, Wortham Theater Center, and an endowment of just under $46 million (as of July 31, 2009), making it America's fourth largest ballet company. Under the administrative leadership of managing director C.C. Conner since 1995, the company has maintained an enviable financial position, emerging as one of the only Houston performing arts organizations to maintain a balanced budget for the last decade.
Houston Ballet has toured extensively both nationally and internationally. Over the last decade, the company has appeared in London at Sadler's Wells, at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, in six cities in Spain, in Montreal, at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in New York at City Center, and in cities large and small across the United States.
Houston Ballet has emerged as a leader in the expensive, labor-intensive task of nurturing the creation and development of new full-length narrative ballets. The company has also commissioned new one-act ballets from some of the world's most respected choreographers, including Julia Adam, Christopher Bruce, James Kudelka, Trey McIntyre, Paul Taylor, Glen Tetley, Natalie Weir, and Lila York.
Writing in The Financial Times on March 6, 2006, dance critic Hilary Ostlere praised Houston Ballet as "a strong, reinvigorated company whose male contingent is particularly impressive,
a well-drilled corps and an enviable selection of soloists and principals." Dance Europe editor Emma Manning observed of the company in November 2004, "One of the first things that hits you about this company is the technical strengths not just of the principals, but throughout the ranks. Watching artistic director Stanton Welch take class on a Sunday morning before a matinee, one could not help but marvel at the multiple turns tossed off by the young women in the corps....The three new works shown in this program will be followed by no fewer than four more Houston premieres. Can any other major ballet company in the world match that?" |
|
