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Houston Ballet
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 Beginning in the 1930s, 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. The Houston Ballet has its origins in the Houston Ballet Academy, which was established in 1955 under the leadership of Tatiana Semenova, a former dancer with the Ballets Russes. In 1969, the foundation formed a professional ballet company under the direction of Nina Popova, also a former dancer with the Ballet Russes and the American Ballet Theatre. Direction From 1976–2003, Ben Stevenson, a former dancer with Britain's Royal Ballet and English National Ballet, se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Ballet Theatre
American Ballet Theatre (ABT) is a classical ballet company based in New York City. Founded in 1939 by Lucia Chase and Richard Pleasant. Through 2019, it had an annual eight-week season at the Metropolitan Opera House (Lincoln Center) in the spring and a shorter season at the David H. Koch Theater in the fall; the company tours around the world the rest of the year. The company was scheduled to have a 5-week spring season at the MET preceded by a 2-week season at the Koch Theater beginning in 2020. ABT is the parent company of the American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and was recognized as "America's National Ballet Company" in 2006 by the United States Congress. History In 1939 Pleasant and Chase committed to the creation of "a large scale company with an eclectic repertory". The pair and a small group from Mordkin Ballet formed Ballet Theatre. Their new company's first performance was on 11 January 1940. Chase began developing the company's repertoir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julie Kent (dancer)
Julie Kent (born Julie Cox, 1969) is an American ballet dancer; she was a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre from 1993 to June 2015. In 2016, she was named the artistic director of The Washington Ballet. She became co-artistic director at the Houston Ballet in July 2023. Early life She was born Julie Cox in Bethesda, Maryland. Her father was a nuclear physicist and her mother, who is from New Zealand, was a ballet dancer and later flight attendant. She started ballet at age eight. She trained with Hortensia Fonseca at the Academy of the Maryland Youth Ballet. She also spent summers attending intensives at American Ballet Theatre II and School of American Ballet. She took the stage name Julie Kent at the suggestion of Mikhail Baryshnikov. Career Kent joined the American Ballet Theatre in 1985, as an apprentice. The following year, she competed at the Prix de Lausanne, and was the only American to win any medal that year. Later that year, she became a member of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Houston Press
The ''Houston Press'' is an online newspaper published in Houston, Texas, United States. It is headquartered in the Midtown Houston, Midtown area. It was also a weekly print newspaper until November 2017. The publication is supported entirely by advertising revenue and is free to readers. It reports a monthly readership of 1.6 million online users. Prior to the 2017 cessation of the print edition, the ''Press'' was found in restaurants, coffee houses, and local retail stores. New weekly editions were distributed on Thursdays. History The alt-weekly ''Houston Press'' was founded in 1989 by John Wilburn, Chris Hearne (founder of Austin's ''Third Coast Magazine'') and Kirk Cypel (a vice president of a Houston-based investment group) conceived of this news and entertainment weekly after rejecting a business plan to relaunch ''Texas Business Magazine''. Hearne and John Wilburn, who previously managed the Sunday magazine of the ''Dallas Morning News'', jointly established the magaz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wortham Theater Center
The Wortham Theater Center is a performing arts center located in downtown Houston, Texas, United States. The Wortham Theater Center, designed by Eugene Aubry of Morris Architects, was built out of private funds totaling over $66 Million. The City of Houston owns the building, and the Houston First Corporation operates the facility. History The Wortham Theater Center officially launched on May 9, 1987. The inaugural performance, '' Tango Argentino'', was performed in the Brown Theatre. '' The Knee Plays'', written by Robert Wilson and lead singer David Byrne of Talking Heads, was presented by the Society for the Performing Arts in the Cullen Theater. In 2017 it was damaged by Hurricane Harvey; it reopened in September 2018. Significant Private Funding A significant portion of the funding needed to build the center came from the estate of the late Gus Wortham (1891–1976), a local philanthropist and founder of American General Insurance Company. The Wortham Foundation co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hurricane Harvey
Hurricane Harvey was a devastating tropical cyclone that made landfall in Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, causing catastrophic flooding and more than 100 deaths. It is tied with 2005's Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cyclone on record, inflicting $125 billion (2017 USD) in damage, primarily from catastrophic rainfall-triggered flooding in Greater Houston and Southeast Texas; this made the storm the costliest natural disaster recorded in Texas at the time. It was the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Wilma in 2005, ending a record 12-year span in which no hurricanes made landfall at the intensity of a major hurricane throughout the country. In a four-day period, many areas received more than of rain as the system slowly meandered over eastern Texas and adjacent waters, causing unprecedented flooding. With peak accumulations of , in Nederland, Texas, Harvey was the wettest tropical cyclone on record in the United Stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Annise Parker
Annise Danette Parker (born May 17, 1956) is an American politician from the state of Texas. A Democrat, Parker served as the 61st Mayor of Houston, Texas, from 2010 until 2016. She also served as an at-large member of the Houston City Council from 1998 to 2003 and as city controller from 2004 to 2010. Parker is Houston's second female mayor (after Kathy Whitmire). She is also one of the first openly gay mayors of a major U.S. city, with Houston being the most populous U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor until Lori Lightfoot was elected mayor of Chicago in 2019. Early life and education Parker was born in the Spring Branch community of Houston on May 17, 1956. Her mother, Kay Parker, was a bookkeeper. Parker was adopted by her mother's second husband, Ivy Leslie Parker, who worked for the Red Cross. She lived briefly in Mississippi and South Carolina. In 1971, when Parker was 15, her family moved to a U.S. Army post in Mannheim, Germany for two years. In Germany, she vol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ermanno Florio
Ermanno Florio (born March 29, 1954) is an Italian-born Canadian and American orchestra conductor. He was music director of Houston Ballet from 1992 to 2024, and has previously held similar posts at American Ballet Theatre, Dutch National Ballet, and the National Ballet of Canada. A prolific recording artist, Florio has received honors and awards including an Emmy Award and a Cannes Classical Music Award. He is especially associated with conducting and arranging music for dance and is among the world's leading conductors for ballet. Early life and education Florio was born in Carapelle Calvisio, Italy, on March 29, 1954, and moved to Toronto, Canada, with his parents in 1956. From 1966 to 1973, he attended the Royal Conservatory of Music, during which time he was a violinist with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and Canadian Chamber Orchestra. He later studied under Victor Martin at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, from which he received a Bachelor of Music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Everly
Jack Everly (born January 13, 1952) is an American conductor who serves as Principal Pops Conductor with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic and the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa, Canada). Born in Richmond, Indiana, Everly appears as guest conductor with orchestras throughout North America and is a former conductor of the American Ballet Theatre. Career Jack Everly graduated from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University where he studied music and set design. He is the Principal Pops Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic and the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa). He has conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall and made appearances with The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center. Everly is the also Music Director of the IPL Yuletide Celebration. He led the ISO in its first Pops recording, ''Yuletide Celebration, Volume One'', that included three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Lanchbery
John Arthur Lanchbery OBE (15 May 1923 – 27 February 2003) was an English-Australian composer and conductor, famous for his ballet arrangements. He served as the Principal Conductor of the Royal Ballet from 1959 to 1972, Principal Conductor of the Australian Ballet from 1972 to 1977, and Musical Director of the American Ballet Theatre from 1978 to 1980. He continued to conduct regularly for the Royal Ballet until 2001. Lanchbery was widely considered (including by Nureyev) to be the greatest ballet conductor of his time, and to be "a conductor and music director of unmatched experience" who was "directly responsible for raising the status and the standards of musical performance". Maina Gielgud, Artistic Director of Australian Ballet, stated that "He anchberyis not only the finest conductor for dance of his generation and probably well beyond". One critic wrote that "the music was always on its best behaviour" when Lanchbery was conducting. He was also famous for his re-adapt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Houston Symphony
The Houston Symphony is an American orchestra based in Houston, Texas. The orchestra is resident at the Jesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts. History The first concert of what was to become the Houston Symphony took place on June 21, 1913, sponsored by the Houston philanthropist Ima Hogg. Initially, the orchestra was composed of only 35 part-time musicians. Despite its small stature and budget, the orchestra and its first conductor, Julien Paul Blitz, enjoyed a good response and continued to perform. He conducted until 1916, then Paul Bergé, until the orchestra disbanded in 1918. The orchestra reformed in 1930, still as a semi-professional orchestra, and gave its first full season of concerts the following year conducted by Uriel Nespoli. In the spring of 1936, the symphony society officially became the Houston Symphony Society. Ernst Hoffmann began his tenure that year with increased support from the Society and began hiring professional musicians. The orches ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Houston Chronicle
The ''Houston Chronicle'' is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only ''The New York Times'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''. With the 1995 buyout of its longtime rival the ''Houston Post'', the ''Chronicle'' became Houston's newspaper of record. The ''Houston Chronicle'' is the largest daily newspaper owned and operated by the Hearst (media), Hearst Corporation, a Privately held company, privately held multinational corporation, multinational corporate media conglomerate with $10 billion in revenues. The paper employs nearly 2,000 people, including approximately 300 journalism, journalists, editorial, editors, and photography, photographers. The ''Chronicle'' has bureaus in Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas, Austin. The paper reports that its web site averages 125 million page views per month. The publication serves as the "newspaper of record" of the Housto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
