FREE Performances at Miller Outdoor Theatre This Weekend!

The company has returned from Spain and is thoroughly happy to be back in the U.S.  The dancers and production staff have had a quick 5 days to recuperate from their travels and to prepare for this weekend’s three FREE performances of Classically Contemporary at Miller Outdoor Theatre. 

Classically Contemporary, running May 8-10 at 8 pm each night, is a mixed repertory program including Stanton Welch’s Nosotros and Medieval Baebes, Hans van Manen’s Solo, and George Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky pas de deux.  Each provides a beautiful interpretation of classical ballet that shows the range and evolution of dance styles and the virtuosity of Houston Ballet’s dancers.

While all performances at Miller Outdoor Theatre are free of charge, Houston Ballet’s performances of Classically Contemporary require tickets to the seated area.  Tickets are available on the day of the performance from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Miller Theatre Box Office. Any tickets remaining are distributed one hour before curtain. There is a limit of four tickets per person. Please call 281.FREE.FUN (281-373-3386) for further ticket information or visit www.milleroutdoortheatre.com.

We hope you’ll join us on the hill for a lovely evening of ballet!

Interview from Spain on KUHF Tomorrow

If you’re interested, KUHF (88.7 FM) will air an interview with our general manager Jim Nelson from Spain–tomorrow at noon on The Front Row.  Jim will give a from-the-road update on the company’s travels and performances. Enjoy!

Update from Pamplona and Murcia

Guest writer: Brian Walker, production manager

April 25:  We’ve survived the first week.  It’s Saturday night, and we just finished our show in Pamplona.  This was show #4 this week.  We arrived in Pamplona this morning at 11am (having left Santander this morning at 8am after performing a show there last night). Our advance team started working yesterday to get the show set up. It was a pretty major push to get the things that are moving with us in the air and to finish up the focus of the lights and check the light cues.  The dancers had a short rehearsal on stage due to the travel time in the morning.  All in all the show went well.  We had a couple of technical glitches, but considering the pretty monumental task presented to us, it all went really well.  So far this week we’ve been in Vigo, A Coruña, Santander and Pamplona.  By the end of the day Saturday, the production staff will have worked over 60 hours.  The crew has worked really hard, and I can’t say enough about how great the guys have been.  Everyone has jumped in to help get the show up and to make sure we do the best we can.  Tomorrow morning we drive to Murcia.  It’s about a 9 hour drive, but fortunately for the crew, we don’t have to go to the theater until Monday.  Basically, we’re looking at the travel day as a free day even though we’ll be on a bus for such a long time.  We’ve gotten through the hardest part of the tour, so hopefully next week will be a little easier…though we have a really tough travel day between Murcia and Oviedo.  
 
April 27:  It’s a new week and a new theater.  After a 9+ hour bus ride yesterday from Pamplona to Murcia, the crew is relatively rested and ready to start again.  This week is organized differently than last week in that we only do 2 shows and we have some time in between each.  We are loading in today (Monday) and performing the show tomorrow night.  We travel and load in to Oviedo on Wednesday and do a show Thursday night.  The main problem this week is going to be that Murcia and Oviedo are on opposite sides of the country, so we will be getting up at about 4am on Wednesday to catch an early flight to get to Oviedo in time to do the load-in that morning.  Needless to say, we’ll be a little tired after loading out of Murcia until midnight and then turning around a few hours later to get on a plane.

But enough about what’s to come…we had a great trip across the country to get here.  Even though it was gray and rainy for a lot of the ride, the hours that we were awake (we definitely caught up on our sleep), we saw some amazing scenery.  We got to Murcia around 7pm, so we were able to enjoy the rest of the evening and have a nice meal. 

I can’t say enough how proud I am of the Houston Ballet crew.  This has been a really rough tour so far and everyone has really worked hard.  Everyone has really gone above and beyond to make these shows work.

More to come later. Pictures of the bus trip here.

-Brian

Update from Vigo

Guest writer: Brian Walker, production manager

OK – we’ve survived the rehearsal in our first city, Vigo. It’s almost 8 am, and I’m sitting in the hotel lobby getting ready to travel to A Coruña to meet the other production team that started working yesterday.  We loaded out of the theater last night until about 11:30 pm.  In total, we worked 34 hours in 3 days to get the first show up on its feet.  Needless to say, the crew are all a little worn out, and we still have five cities to go.  Everyone is still in good spirits though and are still working hard.  We brought five multipacks of 5 Hour Energy Shots to help keep the blood flowing.  Today is going to be a long one.  Only one day in A Coruña and then heading to Santander tomorrow morning.  It will be another late night tonight and early morning tomorrow.

Our tour catch-phrase is quickly becoming “One Night Only”.

More later.
 
-Brian

Photos from Spain tour

I’ve set up a Flickr photostream for our tour to Spain, so if you’d like to keep up with the company’s day-to-day experiences, check it out here.  Every time we get new images from the road, I’ll upload them straight to that link.  Enjoy!

-Sarah
Marketing Manager

Company Departs for Spain Tour Tomorrow

Guest writer: Brian Walker, production manager

Today is the final day of preparation before we leave for Spain.  We’ve been working on this tour off and on for about a year.  We started with a different promoter that ended up having to back out of the project after having some organizational problems.  We thought the tour had fallen through at that point, which was in August.  In late October another promoter picked up the project and after some negotiations and concessions, we were able to sort out a two week tour.  We start the tour in Vigo, then travel to A Coruna, Santander, Pamplona, Murcia and end in Oviedo.  We perform back-to-back in Vigo and A Coruna, then Santander and Pamplona.  It will mean very long days for the crew since we will have to travel to the new city and finish the load-in the day of the show.  Fortunately we are bringing an extra person from Houston who will be traveling ahead with a lighting designer from Spain. 

This is what the schedule looks like –
Vigo – April 21
A Coruna – April 22
Santander – April 24
Pamplona – April 25
Murcia – April 28
Oviedo – April 30

We are performing two different programs while we are in Spain.  Our main “full” program consists of Stanton Welch’s Nosotros and Divergence and Christopher Bruce’s Hush.  Due to the size of some of the venues, we weren’t able to do Divergence in all of the cities, so we came up with a “gala” alternative program.  That will consist of Stanton Welch’s Mediaeval Baebes, Han van Manen’s Solo, Hush, and  a modified version of Stanton Welch’s Nosotros.  We do the “gala” program in Vigo, A Coruna and Oviedo.  The full program will be in Santander, Pamplona and Murcia.  To give you a little perspective on the scale of things, the stage in Vigo and A Coruna are about 33’ deep by 37’ wide.  Our normal set up at the Wortham in the Brown is 55’ deep by 48’ wide.  Vigo also happens to have a 4% rake to the stage. 

This is going to be a very new touring experience for most of the company.  We generally take more time to get into the theater and rehearse.  This is going to be much more like the touring that Houston Ballet did in the past where one-night engagements were more common and the approach taken was much simpler.  General manager Jim Nelson will be writing blogs from the road, and if I have time between cities and I’m awake enough, I will try to do a blog or two.  Hopefully we’ll come back with some great pictures and funny stories.

Wish us luck!

-Brian