Houston Ballet Soloists

Houston Ballet, operated by Houston Ballet Foundation, is a professional ballet company based in Houston, Texas. The company consists of 59 dancers and produces over 85 performances per year. It is the 5th largest ballet company in the United States (by number of dancers).

History

Tatiana Semenova (1955–1967)

Houston's professional ballet style began developing in the 1930s through Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo spent a week during the Christmas season performing for Houston audiences for 11 years. This led patrons to express a growing desire for a resident dance company within Houston. In Spring of 1955, a former dancer with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Tatiana Semenova, was invited to start a ballet school in Houston. Semenova accepted, and a state charter was obtained to establish Houston Foundation for Ballet on July 26, 1955.

Under Semenova's direction, the Foundation trained young dancers in ballet technique and reached out to under-served students. It established a scholarship program with the Neighborhood Centers Association to train students at Ripley House in Houston's East End, later advancing selected students into the school. Semenova remained the director until 1966.

Nina Popova (1967–1976)

In 1967, Nina Popova, another alumna of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, was selected as the Foundation's next Artistic Director with the understanding that she was to create a company of professional dancers. By mid-December 1967, Popova had trained a corps of students and recruited students from other Houston dance studios to perform in an elegant full-length production of ''Giselle,'' featuring star dancers from American Ballet Theatre: Carla Fracci and Erik Bruhn as Giselle and Albrecht, Cynthia Gregory as Myrtha, and Terry Orr and Mariana Tcherkassky dancing the ''Peasant'' ''pas de deux''.

By 1968, Popova began selecting and training dancers for a professional company. Auditions for dancers were held during the fall of 1968 in Houston, Dallas, New York and Los Angeles. Sixteen dancers began the first season and made their debut on February 17, 1969, at Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas. This performance launched their statewide tour to 23 cities, which concluded with their Jones Hall premiere on May 14, 1969.

The company included four Academy-trained Houstonians, with imported dancers Judith Aaen and Anthony Sellers as Principals. In April 1972, Henry Holth, former Manager of Boston Ballet, was appointed as the executive head of the Houston Ballet Foundation. That same year, Houston Ballet performed Frederic Franklin’s ''Nutcracker'' for six post-Christmas performances in Jones Hall. These were Houston Ballet's first performances with a live orchestra.

By 1973, Houston Ballet's business offices had moved into Jones Hall. To attract a larger audience, guest stars were invited to perform with the company. Cynthia Gregory, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Desmond Kelly, Allegra Kent, Edward Villella, Natalia Makarova, and Ivan Nagy all guested during the next few seasons. More solo and leading dancers were added to the company, notably the Finnish couple Leo Ahonen and Soili Arvola.

After Popova resigned in February 1975, James Clouser, who had been a regular ballet master and a popular choreographer with both the dancers and audiences, was named interim Artistic Director while the board searched for Popova's replacement.

The board's artistic committee ultimately chose British-born Ben Stevenson as the next Artistic Director because of his classical foundation, his intense interest in training Academy students, and his international contacts that would attract the best talent to Houston. Clouser resigned after Stevenson was appointed, but not before Houston Ballet's world premiere of his rock ballet, ''Caliban,'' in May 1976.

Ben Stevenson OBE (1976–2003)

Stevenson's goal of building a company by training its dancers in a resident academy won full support from Houston Ballet Foundation's trustees, and he ultimately succeeded in bringing the company to maturity. But it took time to achieve that goal. Having retained only 12 of the 28 dancers from Houston Ballet's Popova/Clouser years, Stevenson had to import nearly two-thirds of his company members.

Initially, four of the five principals were retained: Leo Ahonen, Soili Arvola, Matti Tikkanen, and Andrea Vodehnal, who had begun her childhood training in Houston. Several dancers from companies Stevenson had previously worked with followed him to Houston and became leading members of Houston Ballet over the next five to ten years. These dancers included Soloists: Suzanne Longley, Rosemary Miles, Janie Parker, and Dorio Pérez; and five Corps de Ballet dancers: Michael Bjerknes, Thomas Boyd, Jennifer Holmes, William Pizzuto, and Kristine Richmond.

For the next eleven years, Stevenson would choreograph several full-length ballets for the company: ''Cinderella, The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake,'' and ''Peer Gynt''. ''Peer Gynt'' was Stevenson's first original story ballet. He also staged more than 20 of his one-act ballets while also engaging some of the most important choreographers of the time: Ronald Hynd, Barry Moreland, Hans van Manen, John Cranko, and Sir Frederick Ashton.

In 1980, former Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo executive J. B. Cerrone became General Manager of the company. During his tenure, the number of dancers, budget, and size of the orchestra grew tremendously. ''citation needed''">Wikipedia:Citation needed">''citation needed''
Houston Ballet shared Jones Hall with the Houston Symphony, Houston Grand Opera, and the Society for the Performing Arts. In 1987, the Wortham Theater Center opened and became Houston Ballet's new performance home. The company launched its 1987–88 season on the new Wortham Theater Center's Brown Theater stage on September 2, 1987, with Stevenson's production of ''Romeo and Juliet'''','' with Li Cunxin and Janie Parker in the title roles.

The opening of Wortham Theater Center marked the beginning of a new era for Houston Ballet. The dancers finally had a sprung dance floor, a deeper stage, ample backstage space, and an expanded lighting grid - improvements that created new production possibilities. Stevenson engaged Desmond Heeley to redesign and enhance the production quality of his staging of ''The Nutcracker''. This production premiered on December 4, 1987, and would be performed annually by the company for the next 30 years.

In 1989, Houston Ballet appointed British choreographers Sir Kenneth MacMillan as Artistic Associate and Christopher Bruce as Associate Choreographer. Together, they brought modern influences to Houston Ballet's repertoire. Bruce introduced numerous works into Houston Ballet's repertoire over the next two decades, and MacMillan added five ballets, including his full-length ''Manon.''

Throughout the remaining 14 years of his directorship, Stevenson blended elegant new productions of classic ballets – notably ''La Sylphide, Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, La Fille Mal Gardée,'' and ''Don Quixote'' - with world premieres of several of his original full-length and shorter ballets: ''Alice in Wonderland'' (1992), ''Dracula'' (1997), and ''The Snow Maiden'' (1998). Finally, he choreographed ''Cleopatra'' (1999) for Lauren Anderson.

Stevenson increased the number of guest choreographers by contracting works from internationally known dance-makers: Glen Tetley, James Kudelka, Paul Taylor, Jerome Robbins, Jiří Kylián, Lila York, William Forsythe, Natalie Weir, Brian Enos, Nacho Duato, David Parsons, Houston-born David Roussève, Farrell Dyde, Gillian Lynne, and Stanton Welch.

During his tenure, Stevenson also nurtured the choreographic careers of several of his dancers: Daniel Jamison, William Pizzuto, Barbara Bears, Sean Kelly, Ken Kempe, Timothy O’Keefe, Sandra Organ, Kristine Richmond, Dominic Walsh, and Trey McIntyre. Organ and Walsh went on to establish their own companies in Houston, and McIntyre's choreography was added to the repertoires of several major companies. He formed his own company in Idaho in 2005, after serving eight years as Houston Ballet's Choreographic Associate.

In 1995, Cecil C. Conner, Jr., was appointed as Managing Director bringing to Houston Ballet a professional background in law and several years managing Joffrey Ballet. Under Conner's leadership, Houston Ballet retired its accumulated deficit and quadrupled the company's endowment. ''citation needed''">Wikipedia:Citation_needed.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Wikipedia:Citation needed">''citation needed''During his 17-year tenure, Conner organized 12 tours both within the United States and internationally, greatly raising the company's artistic profile and leading the effort to build Houston Ballet's state-of-the-art facility, the Center for Dance. Following his retirement in 2012, Conner continued in an advisory capacity as Managing Director Emeritus.

Personal recognition from Great Britain came to Stevenson in 2000, when Elizabeth II">Queen Elizabeth II