Houston Ballet 2024-2025 Season, Shows, Reviews

byCherilyn J. Lee

January 1, 2020 - Updated on September 1, 2024

Houston Ballet

♦ Location: Houston, Texas – United States

♦ Artistic Directors: Stanton Welch AM and Julie Kent

♦ Orchestra: Houston Ballet Orchestra

♦ Affiliated School: Houston Ballet Academy

♦ Founded in 1955 by Tatiana Semenova

♦ Official Website of Houston Ballet

Table of Contents

Houston Ballet 2024-2025 Season

Artistic Directors Stanton Welch AM and Julie Kent have recently announced the Houston Ballet 2024-2025 season which features three full-length story ballets and three repertory programs along with the annual Nutcracker and Jubilee of Dance evening.

“The incredible range of ballets offers growth for our dancers as well as audiences.

From curtain up to curtain down, this season explores the depth and breadth of this art form, and I’m so excited to be involved in presenting works we’ve never seen before and the kind of classics that are a wonderful way to introduce new audiences to ballet.”

Julie Kent, Co-Artistic Director of Houston Ballet

Opening the season is the Houston Ballet premiere of John Neumeier’s production of The Little Mermaid which is a beautifully haunting interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale. The performance features sets and costumes of grand scale displayed in a captivating blend of colors and shadows, complemented by an original score by composer Lera Auerbach.

Following is Velocity, a triple-bill that includes:

Aszure Barton’s powerful Come In, originally created in 2006 for her friend and mentor Mikhail Baryshnikov
Stanton Welch’s Velocity, originally choreographed for The Australian Ballet in 2003
A world premiere by Silas Farley who debuted his first piece with the Houston Ballet during the 2022 Margaret Alkek Williams Jubilee of Dance

After the annual productions of The Nutcracker and Jubilee of Dance, 2025 begins with another triple-bill, this time highlighting the fusion of classical dance with contemporary innovation. Works on the In the Night program include Jerome Robbins’ In the Night set to four piano nocturnes by composer Frédéric Chopin, Welch’s Maninyas, and Lila York’s Celts which pays homage to her Irish heritage.

Two classical ballets – Ben Stevenson’s The Sleeping Beauty and Welch’s world premiere Raymonda – follow, while the season wraps up with Sparrow. The latter includes Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, an intensive development of the classic ballet lexicon, Stevenson’s Four Last Songs, set to Richard Strauss’s operatic score, and Welch’s Sparrow, set to Simon & Garfunkel’s most recognizable music such as “Cecilia” and “Scarborough Fair”.