Houston Ballet Announces Upcoming Touring Performances

Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch announced touring plans for both the company and Second Company's 2012-2013 season today. Over the next year, touring engagements will take Houston Ballet from Chicago to Switzerland.

The company begins its touring in August 2012 with an appearance at the Chicago Dancing Festival on Saturday, August 25 at Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois, performing Mark Morris', Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes on a program with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Keigwin + Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and stars of New York City Ballet and San Francisco Ballet. Houston Ballet made its debut at the Chicago Dancing Festival in August 2009, performing William Forsythe's The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, which dance critic Hedy Weiss of The Chicago Sun Times called "a fiendishly difficult work set to a bombastic Schubert symphony and brilliantly performed by members of Houston Ballet. The ballet's title says it all, as three women in hooplike tutus of chartreuse (Jaquel Andrews, Melody Herrera and Sara Webb) and two male dancers (Connor Walsh and Joseph Walsh) - shooting stars, all - moved through choreography of exceptional difficulty and quirkiness at unimaginable velocities. The whole thing had an almost giddy-making effect because the five dancers were not just models of perfection, but met every challenge with that sense of sheer fun that comes with sublime skill and buoyant confidence." For additional information, visit www.chicagodancingfestival.com.

From October 18-20 2012, Houston Ballet will perform Marie, a three-act narrative ballet choreographed by Stanton Welch and inspired by the life of the legendary French queen, Marie Antoinette, at Canada's National Arts Centre in Ottawa. The company last appeared in Ottawa in May 2006, performing a mixed program featuring Mr. Welch's Nosotros and Divergence, and Julia Adam's The Accidental. Tickets may be purchased on the National Arts Centre website at www.nac-cna.ca.

Houston Ballet II has been invited to perform in Switzerland in conjunction with 25 featured guests on a showcase performance on February 2, 2013. The dancers of Houston Ballet II are coached by the internationally recognized Claudio Munoz, ballet master for Houston Ballet II; Sabrina Lenzi, ballet mistress for Houston Ballet II; Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch; and Houston Ballet's artistic staff. In recent seasons, Houston Ballet II has traveled to the Organizacion Para Las Artes in Guatemala City, Guatemala and Folly Theater in Kansas City, Missouri in October 2010; Budapest (International Youth Festival in October 2008 and 2011); and to New York's prestigious City Center for Music & Dance (in January 2007).