Ballet stays on the move post-Harvey
Fall has been a hair-raising rollercoaster ride for Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch. He has spent virtually every day since Hurricane Harvey “making 10 or 12 decisions for every outcome,” he said.
Because the company’s flood-ravaged performance home, the Wortham Theater Center, is shuttered for rebuilding until September, every performance that was planned for this season has been shuffled to a new location, on different dates that have impacted rehearsal schedules and contracts with visiting artists who are booked years in advance.
But now that Welch has confirmed how and where the ballet will carry on for the next six months, he finally feels he has taken the driver’s seat.
“We needed to harness this and create something rather than react to the storm,” he said, referencing Harvey’s wrath.
Although the revised schedule looks scrambled, Welch and executive director Jim Nelson have managed to salvage most of the planned performances that will follow the belated, abbreviated run of “The Nutcracker,” which opened Sunday in Sugar Land.
The season’s big classical ballets will move to halls that can accommodate their
scenery and the Houston Ballet Orchestra: Ben Stevenson’s “Don Quixote” will land in April at the Hobby Center (with a few free shows at Miller Outdoor Theatre), and Welch’s “Swan Lake” will be staged in June at Jones Hall. The company also will take “Swan Lake” to Minneapolis for two shows.
Welch also has devised an innovative plan for using different spaces at the George R. Brown Convention Center for shows in March and June. He is calling those two mixedrep programs “Unconventional Ballets at the Convention Center.”
March’s “Rock, Roll & Tutus” program will be at the George R. Brown Convention Center’s Resilience Theater built by Houston Grand Opera. The stage there poses challenges for ballets designed with side lighting and spotlights, but Welch will make it work for two Houston premieres that were on the books, Tim Harbour’s “Filigree and Shadow” and Trey McIntyre’s “In Dreams.” He has added the company premiere of his pas de deux “Cathedrale Engloutie” and decided to revive Alexander Ekman’s funny, ultra-contemporary “Cacti,” one of last season’s highlights, after abandoning the planned premiere of Ekman’s “Tulle,” whose choreography involves unusual entrances and exits that wouldn’t work at Resilience.
Scheduling and venue issues also meant Welch couldn’t save this season’s much-anticipated premiere of William Forsythe’s “Pas/Parts 2016.” Though it may not sound major to audiences, opportunities to perform new works by important choreographers are significant to dancers. Welch has to dangle those carrots to keep good talent.
“Contracts with outside people — this is tricky,” he said. “Their time is booked, and that will be a puzzle into next year.”
June’s mixed rep will be a grand experiment of ballets created or re-created for the GRB’s massive General Assembly Hall, where Welch plans to use an arena-style stage that he said feels as big as a football field.
He is reworking his “Play” and “Brigade” for the space, which will be surrounded by the audience on three sides; and also is planning a new piece based on a commissioned poem about dancing through a storm by Houston’s poet laureate, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton. “Reach,” an experimental project of Houston Ballet dancers Connor Walsh, Melody Mennite and Oliver Halkowich, also will get time in this spotlight.
Welch said he wanted to make the June show a landmark event people might still be talking about 10 years from now: “The optimist in me says this will be a big hit, and in a few years maybe we’ll want to do another show in the round.”
He also sees a positive side in expanding the ballet’s community with tours to different venues.
“Some child in Sugar Land will see us for the first time and want to come to the academy. That’s how we find home talent,” he said.
Even date changes
might have a silver lining, with the company’s current season extended into July, a few weeks later than normal.
“Maybe it’s not bad to shake it up,” Welch said. “Is that an option, to sell so far into the summer? We will find out.”
Still, he worries that people think the company is now out of the water.
“The consequences of the flood are coming to us now, and the financial ramifications,” he said. “We’re hoping people know when we’re performing, and where.”