With ‘Mayerling,’ Houston Ballet looks to regain its balance
Crown Prince Rudolf, the lead character in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s “Mayerling,” is the meatiest role Connor Walsh has tackled in his 13 years with Houston Ballet. The antithesis of all the romantic nobles Walsh has portrayed, Rudolf is complex and cruel, addicted to morphine and mistresses. He’s also a political rebel in a world still ruled by rigid, royal traditions.
The prince’s downward spiral fuels MacMillan’s three-hour ballet about the real-life heir to the Austrian throne who died scandoulously in 1889, in an apparent murder-suicide with a young baronness, Mary Vetsera.
Capturing the essense of that story would be a challenge at any time, but it’s become especially meaningful to artists of the Houston Ballet — who, like so many other Houstonians — need to regain their balance after the tumult of Hurricane Harvey.
“Mayerling” premieres Friday at the Hobby Center for the Arts while the ballet’s usual home at the Wortham Center recovers from damage sustained by Harvey’s water.
Then there are three more performances squeezed into the next two days, split between two casts. Charles Yoshiyama will also have a crack at Rudolf. Ordinarily, artistic director Stanton Welch would not ask his stars to dance consecutive shows of such a physically exhausting role.
But these are not ordinary times.
During the height of the storm, 14 Houston Ballet Academy students and their chaperone, who live on the top floor of the 6-year-old Houston Ballet Center for Dance on Preston, had to wade out of the building as water rose inside.
Once Welch knew they were safe, he panicked about Houston Ballet’s massive warehouse on the east side of town. “If we lost our sets, that would be everything,” Welch said. “It brings me to tears just thinking about it.”
The warehouse was not damaged, but the groundlevel flooring in the Center for Dance was ruined, affecting one studio, the black box theater and the lobby.
Welch knew the Wortham Theater Center, where the company performs, was damaged. But for more than a week, he didn’t know how bad it was. It was bad.
This wasn’t the company’s first flood. Tropical Storm Allison filled the Wortham’s basement with 4 feet of water in June 2001, tanking a run of “Giselle” that had just opened. That time, though, they had three months to recover before their next series of programs.
Harvey’s timing, three weeks before the start of a season, posed a bigger problem. That’s why, as soon as Welch, executive director Jim Nelson and other company leaders could navigate the streets, they huddled at the center. Even though their building was still without power and plumbing, they had no time to waste.
“Mayerling” was supposed to have been the second program of Houston Ballet’s new season, after a mixed-rep bill called “Poetry in Motion” that included dances by Welch, George Balanchine and Christopher Wheeldon.
Welch and Nelson canceled “Poetry in Motion” within a few days of the storm having cleared, hoping they’d be back in the theater for “Mayerling.”
Then came a surreal week in limbo. Walsh was among dancers who joined the “Ballet Brigade” to help muck out flooded homes for about 10 staff members before they restarted class and rehearsals in borrowed studios at MetDance and the MATCH, in Midtown.
Just as Nelson got the Center for Dance back on its feet, albeit in a remodeling phase, he learned the Wortham had fared far worse than expected. Far worse than during Allison.
Overwhelming floodgates, the raging Buffalo Bayou submerged everything from the Wortham’s basement to the ballet’s home stage, reaching a total depth of 15 feet. The ceiling between the two floors collapsed.
Houston First, the Wortham’s operator, still has not let tenants back inside, where remediation is ongoing. All performances through mid-October have been canceled.
For the ballet, that was the worst blow — although it also lost two grand pianos, percussion instruments, its on-site wardrobe shops with sewing and washing machines, some of its costume inventory and anything the orchestra’s musicians had not moved from their basement lockers ahead of the storm.
Remarkably, Nelson had a contract in two days with the privately owned Hobby Center — essentially taking Houston Ballet on tour a few blocks west of its home stage. The Hobby’s Sarofim Hall is beautiful, comparable and slightly larger, with about 360 more seats than the Wortham’s Brown Theater.
Nelson also scored two October weeknight dates for “Poetry in Motion” at the Hobby — but made “Mayerling” the priority.
Welch had just seen Walsh rehearse a run-through of the ballet the Friday before Harvey hit. “There was no way we couldn’t do this,” he said. “It really suits Connor and the rest of the company. We had to get this ballet on.”
He also wanted the coup for the city. Houston Ballet is the first and only U.S. company to perform MacMillan’s masterpiece, which was created in 1978 for England’s Royal Ballet.
With plum parts for five ballerinas who portray all the women in Rudolf’s sordid life, “Mayerling” also features principals Melody Mennite, Sara Webb, Karina González, Jessica Collado and Yuriko Kajiya.
“These are great parts, characters who are not black and white or good versus evil, with issues that are not resolvable,” Welch said.
The move has required shifts for every department — from the production side, with its sets, lights and costumes; to the orchestra and dancers, who will adjust to unfamiliar performance territory; to the box office, which has reseated ticket holders in a different theater configuration, on different dates, without the benefit of its computer system.
There are other obstacles, too, such as fitting in the company’s sprung dance floor, which was designed to go atop the Brown Theater stage. The Hobby’s Sarofim stage is about a foot shallower.
Ermanno Florio and the Houston Ballet Orchestra may be impacted most. Sarofim Hall was made for Broadway touring shows, which have smaller orchestras, and half of its pit is under the stage.
“We’re going to walk in there like it’s a completely different country,” Welch said.
They’ve been practicing in a lobby, and Florio downsized from 65 players to about 50, reducing the string sections. Without space for a grand piano, he’ll have to settle for the lesser sounds from an upright instrument. And music from the Sarofim’s pit is mic’d, something Florio has never experienced as a conductor.
“It makes you realize how fortunate we are to have the Wortham, which has been tailored to our needs,” he said.
Not that he’s complaining. The entire company is thankful the Hobby was available and that officials there have been so accommodating. Most of all, they’re happy to be back at work.
“To be functioning at this level of creativity is a relief,” Welch said. “When some big problem becomes a puzzle, the group you want to be with is artists.”
The dancers are attacking every rehearsal and class with a fresh sense of purpose.
“To be doing this ballet at all is an honor for us,” Walsh said, “and now we have an added appreciation for what we can do to give our audience a sense of relief.”
Will Houstonians be ready for a ballet about a society in collapse?
“Either we’re going to be a little early for that, or right on time,” Welch said. “We have to start trying.”