FOR RELEASE ON                                                               CONTACT: MELISSA CARROLL
May 22, 2007                                                                      CASSIE PATTERSON MCCLUNG
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HOUSTON BALLET ANNOUNCES
2007-2008 SEASON

American Premiere of Stanton Welch’s Full-Length Cinderella
Highlights Season in March 2008

A New Work by James Kudelka to be Unveiled in May 2008

Three World Premieres by Stanton Welch
Highlight Fall, Winter, and Spring Repertory Programs

Season Features Company Premieres of Works by Jiří Kylián and Hans van Manen

Houston, Texas – Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch has announced the company’s 2007-2008 season.  In the coming season, the company will present eight new works, offering a clear picture of the continued evolution of Houston Ballet and where Mr. Welch is taking the company.  Mr. Welch continues to enlarge the repertory with some of today’s most noteworthy choreographers (including James Kudelka, Jiří Kylián and Hans van Manen), and to create new works for Houston Ballet. 

In March 2008, the company will unveil the American premiere of Mr. Welch’s lavish staging of Cinderella, Houston Ballet’s first new production of this work in nineteen years.  In September 2007, Mr. Welch will create a new full-company work to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons on a program with the company premiere of Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort.  In February 2008, Mr. Welch will unveil a large-scale one-act ballet set to George Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, a valentine to the city of New York in the shadow of the Second World War.  In May 2008, acclaimed Canadian choreographer James Kudelka will create a new work for Houston Ballet on a program featuring the company premieres of Hans van Manen’s Five Tangos and Mr. Welch’s abstract neoclassical work Falling.  And capping the season in June 2008 will be an authoritative new staging of the great Romantic classic La Sylphide by Dane Johnny Eliasen alongside a new one-act work by Stanton Welch set to the music by Hungarian composer István Márta.

Houston Ballet 2007-2008 season has been generously underwritten by: Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation, ConocoPhillips, EDS, Baker Botts LLP, Continental Airlines, Fulbright and Jaworski LL.P., Shell Oil Company Foundation, Spectra Energy, Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, The Cullen Foundation, and City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.