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102. The Evolution of a Ballet Career with Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch
140 Plays4 days ago
In this episode of the Brainy Ballerina Podcast, I am joined by Stanton Welch, Artistic Director of Houston Ballet and internationally renowned choreographer.
Stanton shares the unconventional path that led him to ballet, from growing up backstage with his parents, principal dancers with the Australian Ballet, to falling in love with dance at 16 and training at San Francisco Ballet School before joining The Australian Ballet.
We talk about his transition from dancer to choreographer to artistic director, how his creative process has evolved over the years, and what inspires him when creating new works. Stanton also gives an inside look at how he programs seasons for Houston Ballet, what he looks for in dancers during auditions, and the type of culture he strives to create within the company.
A major focus of this conversation is Youth America Grand Prix and Houston Ballet hosting the YAGP Finals for the first time. Stanton shares valuable advice for dancers navigating competitions, auditions, setbacks, and social media in today’s dance world. He discusses why competitions are about far more than winning, how directors actually evaluate dancers, and the importance of resilience and long-term career thinking.
This episode is full of insight for aspiring professional dancers, teachers, and anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes realities of building a sustainable career in ballet.
Key Points From This Episode:
- Why Stanton Welch didn’t start ballet until age 16
- How he began choreographing while still dancing professionally and what keeps him inspired all these years later
- How Houston Ballet approaches company culture
- What makes a dancer stand out in auditions and competitions
Connect with Stanton & Houston Ballet
WEBSITE: https://www.houstonballet.org
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/houstonballet
Links and Resources:
Brandllet: www.brandllet.com
ORZA: www.orzabrand.com (use code BRAINYBALLERINA for 10% off)
Let’s connect!
My WEBSITE: thebrainyballerina.com
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thebrainyballerina
Questions/comments? Email me at caitlin@thebrainyballerina.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Ballet and Adaptation
00:00:00
Speaker
Well, I think you i mean you're just changing all the time. i think also you could stay as a director and in the 25 years change it you change society changes, what ballet is expected or doing is changing.
00:00:14
Speaker
So that evolution you have to just kind of like a dancer, I guess, that you have to approach the class each day. Some things will work, some things won't. You have to apply your technique. Your back is no longer as flexible. You have to alter how that technique works.
00:00:28
Speaker
I think dancers do that really well. And I think directors and choreographers are a part of that same problem solving thing.
Podcast Host and Guest Introduction
00:00:38
Speaker
I'm Kaitlyn, a former professional ballerina turned dance educator and career mentor, and this is the Brand New Ballerina podcast. I am here for the aspiring professional ballerina who wants to learn what it really takes to build a smart and sustainable career in the dance industry.
00:00:54
Speaker
I'm peeling back the curtain of professional dance world with open and honest conversations about the realities of becoming a professional dancer. Come along to gain the knowledge and inspiration you need to succeed in a dance career on your terms.
00:01:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Brainy Ballerina Podcast. I'm your host, Caitlin Sloan, and I am joined today by Stanton Welch. Stanton is the artistic director of Houston Ballet and a prolific choreographer whose work can be seen in the repertoire of companies all over the world.
Stanton Welch's Ballet Journey
00:01:28
Speaker
Stanton, you have had such an incredible career, but I want to go back to the very beginning of your dance journey today and hear why did you take your very first dance class. Oh, right. Well, I didn't start ballet until I was about 16 and a half. My parents were both ballet dancers, so we were around ballet a lot as young kids. And I i guess we saw how hard it was, you know, from being backstage. So it it never really interested me. And then when I got to be about 15, 15 and a half,
00:01:57
Speaker
I was really invested in acting and doing musical theatre and stuff like that. And I thought, you know, what would be good for me is to have more ballet, some dance training. And I started doing ballet and then I fell in love with ballet. My parents were ballet teachers too. So after a year of studying with them, I went to San Francisco Ballet School from there.
00:02:15
Speaker
Wow. So before that, did your parents ever kind of push you to start ballet or were they just like, whatever you want to do is is fine? Absolutely. Whatever. Not against ballet, but certainly like if you do ballet, realize that it's hard, right? Like it's not a cushion thing. But they were very supportive. When we were little kids, we did a lot of character work in ballets. Like we were the little children in ballets because we traveled with mom and dad, so we were available. And I remember mum saying to Damien and I once, look, you have to do one ballet class in order to be in this show. So we did the ballet class and apparently i just sat on the floor with my arms folded and didn't do it. And my brother cried and did the whole class just crying. So then we never went back to ballet. That was when i was about probably seven or six.
00:03:03
Speaker
It's funny. Yeah, I'm not sure why. So when you went back older, did you have a really natural aptitude for it right away? I'm lucky with physicality, I think, with my parents and everything. And I'd done a lot of swimming and gymnastics. Like i was a pretty athletic kid. Water polo, ice skating a little bit. So, yeah, I feel like physically I was already kind of flexible. That wasn't a big step for me. I've always felt behind in the terminology and the syllabus and all of that kind of stuff because, you know, at 16 and a half, it was hard to start and yet embarrassing and, you know, you're wearing a jog strap for the first time at that age and tights, you know, it took me months to put on tights. all those things that you don't think about. And then also, because they ran the school, I could be with them in their full-time program all day, but then I'd stay on and do all the junior classes in the evening. and I think that's really what did it for me. Had I have just tried to do my age group, it wouldn't have worked. What was great was I had access to seven days a week dancing from 9am till 10 o'clock, and I'd just go with mum and dad in the morning and come back with them at night. After a year of dancing, how did you feel ready to take the leap to move across the world and train at San Francisco?
Choreography and Artistic Influence
00:04:19
Speaker
I had been New York, New York, New York focused as both before wanting to be a dancer as well. Like if I wanted to be an actor or or anything, I wanted to do it through there.
00:04:30
Speaker
So that was always the plan. And I had really thought of ABT. And this is at the time where Baryshtakov and all the videos. And there was just my heart was set on. And a mum said, look, if you can raise half the money.
00:04:41
Speaker
so I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken a year. I raised half the money for the flight and we came over and I auditioned for ABT Studio Company, but it hadn't started yet. It was starting in July and Australian years are different school years.
00:04:57
Speaker
So they said you have six months to train somewhere else and they suggested it was Jürgen Schneider who was the teacher there. suggested a teacher in San Francisco, Jonathan Watts and Helgi Tomassen, that that would be a great place for me to use the first six months to train before returning to them. So I did that and I just fell in love with San Francisco Ballet and the city. And when it came time to go back to New York, I didn't go. I i stayed at San Francisco.
00:05:26
Speaker
How did that time in your training prepare you for your professional career? oh well, I mean, San Francisco Ballet, know, I'd grown up watching the Australian Ballet. I know it. like inside out from the repertoire and the dancers. But coming to America um and watching San Francisco Valley, it was the most diverse company I had seen at that point. There were dancers from all around the world, and I had not seen that.
00:05:50
Speaker
It was the first time I saw Billy Forsyth's material, Mark Morris' material. First time I'd seen Balanchine dance live. It was just... in That's what it felt like to me. That whole year of watching that company was just... And then also it was back in the day when touring was more.
00:06:10
Speaker
So we had Joffrey Ballet come through, ABT come through. They were all in their prime creative times. I really felt like a highly energizing year for my love of ballet and what that could involve, but also of American dancing. So from there, what was your transition like into professional career? What was your first job?
00:06:28
Speaker
I signed with the Australian Ballet, so I went back to them after a year with San Francisco. Then I danced with them for 11 years, yeah. Do you have a favorite role that you performed? Not one. There's sort of a collection. We're currently preparing ourselves to perform Man On here, and I did get to do De Grieux, and that was a very...
00:06:46
Speaker
special role. And of course, Lenski and Onegin was a very special role for me. But sometimes it's like group ballets. It's a ballet by Nacho Duarte called Giardi Tancat. And I just loved that our cast, there's only six people in it. It was very tight. It felt very special. It's little weird things like that. And also a partner that you might love at one point that there was a special moment. Four last songs we did by Beja, which also was a very special cast and a few.
00:07:19
Speaker
It changes. Yeah. Let's pause this episode and take a moment to talk about something that can feel incredibly complicated for aspiring dancers and artists, navigating the U.S. visa process.
00:07:33
Speaker
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00:07:49
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00:08:07
Speaker
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00:08:19
Speaker
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00:08:35
Speaker
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00:08:47
Speaker
What drew you to choreography? Did you start choreographing while you were still dancing professionally? i did, yeah. So when I was studying to be an actor, I was also writing screenplays and scripts. It just felt like it was a part of that acting process.
00:09:03
Speaker
And so when I started doing ballet, I started straight away transferring that energy into writing ballets. And I used to have like a book, a folder of ballet ideas and keep fleshing them out. And then mum and dad both choreographed as well. And dad had a very successful choreographic career. So part of their curriculum in their school was everyone had to choreograph a ballet. So I did in that year, my first year, and it won some awards.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah, so then I was hooked. Then the only year since then that I didn't choreograph was that one year in San Francisco. And then after that, I have choreographed every year of my life, yeah. Having come from that musical theater background, do you find that you're a story-driven choreographer or is it something else? Is it music? Is it movement? What inspires you? I love both. Like, I think that there are three different ways. I love finding a story and then spending hours trying to nuance it out and then the different characters and the reasons and how that fits with music.
00:10:02
Speaker
And I love taking a classic that exists and within the structure of that classicism, remodeling and re detailing it to be in a different kind of order. But then I do just love getting a great piece of music and making dance. I need to switch between them, if that makes sense to keep my energy going. But I just came off a piece, Stereo is King to Music by Mason Bates, which was just such great music. And it was just fun to choreograph. You know, it was just about those dances and that music.
00:10:36
Speaker
And then prior to that was Raimondo, which was, you know, big epic classic and a lot of classical ballet. How do you feel like you've evolved as a choreographer since you first started? That's interesting. i don't know. i I'm in the process right now. I'm working on a new full length. I always feel like I go through those same ebbs and flows like, oh my God, what have I done? I don't have enough time to, oh, this is fun. I really like it goes in a weekly basis. And the one thing as I've gotten older or actually come to realize as I've gotten older is that a I can't control when that happens in myself. like There'll be a weekend or an evening where you'll just feel everything is making sense. It's like playing a tennis game and you haven't missed the ball yet and it's going and it's going. And then sometimes you can serve and serve and never hit back. And I've never worked out how to fully control that, like how to just switch it on. It it comes in waves and retracts in waves like the oceans.
00:11:36
Speaker
Okay, so just kind of leaning into that. Yeah, I was up late last night because I felt like I was on track on something. So yeah, you kind of you just gotta to go with it. Did
Artistic Directing and Houston Ballet
00:11:46
Speaker
you always see yourself becoming an artistic director?
00:11:48
Speaker
Oh no, no.
00:11:52
Speaker
I saw myself winning an Oscar. There's still time. I think it was more creative choreography and how to make a place as a choreographer that I felt gave choreographers, including myself, access to all the things that made you feel the most creative, like a really focused group of dancers, a beautiful stage, very high production level, a lot of time for lighting and finessing and reworking. And Houston Ballet has that, and that felt very important to maintain. So that was my drive about directorship.
00:12:31
Speaker
But really for me, if I'd sat back and said, oh, what would I love to be doing and just be creating and whatever that form took from a musical to a ballet to yeah, I love making stuff.
00:12:42
Speaker
So how did you come into this role? Were you recruited? Was it an application process? How did that happen for you? Application process. When I first came to America to live, which was about 2000. I'd already had a bit of an established choreographic career. So I was on some of those, I think, short lists or headhunting lists for that.
00:13:02
Speaker
And I felt like it was great practice to talk and to talk about what makes you passionate. And then when the Houston one came about, I'd worked here as a choreographer So I knew how special the setup was for choreography. And, you know, we have two texts, two dresses spread over four days. That's unheard of in ballet. And I really felt like I wanted to protect that. That was what drove it.
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah. How do you think your perspective has changed since being a dancer all the way to be a director? How do you approach things or how do you see things differently now? Well, I think you i mean you're just changing all the time. i think also you could stay as a director and in the 25 years it you change.
00:13:44
Speaker
Society changes what ballet is expected or doing is changing. So that evolution you have to just kind of like a dancer, I guess, that you have to approach the class each day.
00:13:56
Speaker
Some things will work, some things won't. You have to apply your technique. Your back is no longer as flexible. You have to alter how that technique works. I think dancers do that really well. And I think directors and choreographers are a part of that same problem solving thing. Hopefully I've altered and changed a lot, but I was lucky in the fact that with my parents being dancers, I got to always see the backstage of ballet. They were directors, they were coaches, they were teachers.
00:14:23
Speaker
It was hard. It takes a village to put on a ballet. It's not just the performers on stage. There are all the different generations of people pushing that forward. And That really, I think, gave me a very unique sense of what ballet can be. Like a circus family, were a whole tent of people that put on the ballet. I appreciate that from them, if that makes sense.
00:14:46
Speaker
Yeah. What kind of environment do you hope to create in the studio for your dancers? Oh, it depends on the ballet. I mean, I think that there's something like Stereo is King.
00:14:57
Speaker
where the work was very much about the steps that they as a unique person can do. So I don't come in with a lot of preparation. So there might be, you need a lot more of a ping pong effect between, and now you do this and they have to tumble into that direction. And what if you do this? So that kind of thing. And then there'll be times where we approach something that is text driven or very serious like Romeo, where there's not as much wriggle room in how you're interpreting the character.
00:15:27
Speaker
But that in itself creates a lot of interesting choices, if that makes sense. It's not restrictive if you look at it in the right way. To sing the song within the same note range shouldn't feel restrictive. It should feel liberating and creative to find space within that structure.
00:15:44
Speaker
What about in a broader sense, like as workplace culture, what kind of culture do you want to build at Houston Ballet? Oh, well, I think that, you know, you want to have a creative place and also a place that takes ballet as something that is very serious and sacred.
00:16:00
Speaker
You know, that we are a very lucky workplace to be able to do the thing that you love and have the most passion for in your life. I don't think every job has that.
00:16:11
Speaker
And I think a great deal of respect towards all the different departments and including the audience, you know, how are we connecting out in a community sense as well? I think it's good to have dancers that try to understand that whole spectrum in the HB2 program when they go on tour.
00:16:30
Speaker
They're involved in the wardrobe department. And I think that that's really good. Sometimes as a dancer, you can live in a bit of a bubble if you don't see everything else around you. And I think as an organization, I hope that they have a lot of city pride and company pride about a place that is creating its future, creating the history that it will once be known for, if that makes sense.
00:16:53
Speaker
And you're really known for presenting a wide range of repertoire. How do you program a season when you're looking at the entire season that's going to draw on your audiences, but also be really artistically rewarding for you as a choreographer and for your dancers?
00:17:08
Speaker
It's kind of like a five-year plan, to be honest. It can't just be what's coming. We're often budgeting a two-year period from where we're up to. But if you write it out kind of like a five-year plan and recycling in a way, because there are sort of your four or five plans money makers that kind of if you think of film studios they'd be your your marvel film that comes in and makes a billion dollars and they need to exist in every season to some degree a swan lake for example sleeping beauty a nutcracker romeo and juliet and then you have work sometimes that you have to bring that you know are problematic or might not sell might not have that same kind of name draw but are extremely important artistically are great for our audiences to see
00:17:55
Speaker
Those works need to be in the program. You need to make sure that there's new work and that there's opportunity in mixed rep programming for new work and full length. It's sort of a game like that. You take all the full lengths and you juggle them around. we kind of have...
00:18:11
Speaker
three full lengths a year and three mixed rep programs each season, plus then touring. So there's a template. And if you really looked at the 25 years, you would see a slight recurring of those big classics coming. And then you can see those other things sort of decided off of that, if that makes sense.
00:18:30
Speaker
When you're looking for dancers to join Houston Ballet, what are you looking for? What draws you to a dancer? Kind of like what your other question was. It's all those things like a seriousness to work, an ability to be brave and to have that little bit of after flow when you're working with a choreographer. So if you're not just waiting for the next step, but you're helping involve that.
00:18:52
Speaker
I love to have people talk a bit in an audition so that you can hear that they can communicate and I love improvisation a little bit in an audition so you can see creativeness like that. I mean, I'm assuming that everyone who gets to the final stage for us is a high caliber technician, they're musical, so those things are a given. So the little extra things that are those, but you really want someone who comes into a rehearsal room and and I love when I hear this from guests,
00:19:23
Speaker
that the focus of the energy of the dancers is is so much on the person. And that's not everyone, you know, and that's what we look for. Who can who can maintain that? I want to be better. I want more.
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Speaker
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Competitions and Career Advancements
00:20:29
Speaker
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00:20:37
Speaker
Let's talk about Youth America Grand Prix. So you are bringing the finals to Houston for the first time in its 27-year history. Why was it so important for you to bring the finals of YAGP to Houston?
00:20:49
Speaker
Well, I mean, i I love that you're saying Brick, and I'd love to take credit for it, but I don't know if that's really how. Youth American Grand Prix, we've been involved with for about 24 years now. And just as an example of the current 61 dancers in the Houston Ballet, 30 of them went through some capacity of Youth American Grand Prix. So if we went back 20 years and counted the people, it'd be in the hundreds.
00:21:13
Speaker
It has impacted so many dancers across the world. I love the fact that all these ballet teachers and students will come to Houston and everyone doesn't believe what we have here. You know, you have an image of Texas or an image of where we live, but we're actually in this incredible ballet building with a beautiful theatre surrounded by parks and restaurants. And I'm looking forward to being able to show the ballet community what we actually have here in Houston. and for them to see the company and to see where we perform and ah i know what a change it was for me
00:21:48
Speaker
the first time I arrived here and and the revelation that it wasn't what I was expecting. So that's a big, important reason why I want this here in Houston. And I also think out of all the places it's been in the finals, that we're really going to be a great place for them. That the kids have so many great spaces to do class and perform, the climate, the ease of the airports. There are many things about Houston that I think lends itself to be a very successful youth record on parade.
00:22:16
Speaker
And this is similar to my previous question, but I think it can be slightly different in the context of doing a variation or something like that for YGP. So what would you say makes a dancer stand out in and this capacity to you?
00:22:28
Speaker
right Wow, competitions are hard. What stands out to me, the people that I leave the competition remembering are not always the winners, right? They might be people that you've seen in classes or in a group dance or a non-competing person. So there's always an enormous amount of talent.
00:22:45
Speaker
But the people who win in place the people who had a really good day that day necessarily or might have a really phenomenal technique on a certain couple of steps. But that doesn't mean separate them from that solo that they are a company person. They just might be the best person to do that variation ever, but not necessarily in an organization. So...
00:23:07
Speaker
I think my advice to dancers at it would be you are visible to directors wherever you are. You don't have to win. You don't have to place. If you're in a class, we're watching the classes. You are on full display so you can be noticed by just your presence and your work ethic and your technique. And that's I've found it being our most successful transfers.
00:23:30
Speaker
How would you say that dancers can use YGP or another competition to really advance their professional career? Are you seeing a lot of dancers getting contract offers from the finals. Yeah.
00:23:40
Speaker
Maybe not for company, but for the second companies, for sure. I think it's more of a recruitment for schools than company, but most companies in North America now and Europe, I would say actually have a school affiliated to their companies. So I think it's great exposure. I think it's also great exposure for teachers.
00:23:58
Speaker
to see other techniques, other training, what levels your kids are at versus other kids. It's a useful convention. You just shouldn't use it as everything has to be about winning.
00:24:10
Speaker
It's more than that. It's more than that. Every shoe company is there. Every tutu company is there. And you see, you know, the same variation dance by 50 kids or with each teacher's imprint, their fingerprint on that child. It's very telling. I think it's, I love hate competitions. I just don't think anyone should be hung up on the prize. But if you go to it just to see like the Olympics, the spectacle of the world dance scene, then it's brilliant. And everybody's here.
00:24:40
Speaker
Did you ever do any competitions? I did. You did? After year, I didn't win. I went and did the Sydney City of Stedford. I got to the finals. I the only boy in the finals. And then I got a special encouragement award. And what it did for me was break me of that nerves of having to walk out, present something, go off. also you get to practice being good and bad, right? Like it's good to do a solo 50 times because four of them might be really bad and four of them might be really good. And you have to learn as a dancer, how to surf that, navigate that difference.
00:25:14
Speaker
What advice do you have for a dancer who maybe has a bad day, the day of competition, things aren't going well for them? What would you like to see from them? Yeah, that it doesn't, you shake it off. There was an analogy I used to hear a lot when I was a young dancer about, you know, when whatever happens, the show doesn't go well, or you were disappointed or it went really well, whatever it may be, that the next morning when you wake up and you come to class, it's like doing the dishes.
00:25:40
Speaker
And you just start fresh and you clean all the plates and you get everything up and dry and stacked and ready. And then you you start again. And it's like you have to re-prepare your meal every day. I like that. You don't want to carry any residue either way into the next day. Arrogance or negativity. You've got to start each day with that fresh, refine your technique.
00:26:03
Speaker
Work on yourself. Don't worry about other people. Restructure yourself. And then dance. That worked well for me to use class as like a meditation. I don't do it anymore.
00:26:17
Speaker
Well, I like what you said about you may be the best one at that variation, but there's so much more. And I think you can be very well rehearsed. Oh, yeah. That doesn't always mean that you have all the skills as a dancer. So I feel like there's a lot of comparison in that room of like, wow, look at that amazing solo.
00:26:33
Speaker
But to remember that there's other things that come into play. And you've mentioned so many different skills you need as a dancer yeah to succeed. So If you're feeling like less than someone during that performance aspect, perhaps the class is your time to shine or there's other areas that you're going to show your strengths. Absolutely. You know, the kids are screaming over someone doing eight pirouettes. That's not what the directors are looking for.
00:26:57
Speaker
Right. And you just got to remember that, that they're two very different things. There's the circus of the technique that is getting that screaming at a competition, but that's not a job.
00:27:07
Speaker
And that's also not then going to fulfill you as an artist where I mean, ultimately, you want to have a 20 year career. You want to have many works created on you. You want some of those works to go off and be performed around the world. You know, you're trying to imprint and give into the community where that's not what the
Social Media and Ballet's Future
00:27:25
Speaker
competitions are. They are for something different. Have you seen an impact on dance in terms of social media and that kind of landscape since you've been a director or a dancer?
00:27:35
Speaker
yes ah Yes. My advice on it would be, i don't know how much young dancers are realizing that their social media is examined and talked about. I mean, I definitely have choreographers arriving who have studied them online and have strong feelings about that already.
00:27:57
Speaker
I'm an old person. I don't understand that. I think the audition happens when you're in the room, but That's changed and I think we have to accept the fact that it's an extension of themselves. It's like a pre-audition in a way.
00:28:11
Speaker
And I think for young people looking for work, that they just have to be aware of that is out there and that can impact you. And then I also think sort of what you were mentioning earlier, the love hearts on your social media don't equate to ticket sales or don't equate to someone coming to see your show. So I've definitely found there's been discussions around that. Like if someone has really loved on social media does that equate to what it happens in the show and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't I think that that's an interesting thing we're all still navigating our way through my warning would be make sure that you realize that what you post everyone you know or could possibly work for one day will I've seen you who will have seen it
00:28:58
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. Houston Ballet is one of the top companies in the U.S. And as we all know, the arts are struggling. Funding is difficult to come by these days. As the director of one of the leading companies here in America, what advice do you have for arts organizations to navigate this current climate?
00:29:16
Speaker
Well, luckily in Texas, we have very little government funding. So we just have never learned to rely on that. And that makes you kind you know, like single parent. You've learned to adapt in a different way to what you have. My advice in there is that ballet and dance is still very relevant.
Modern Adaptations and Career Advice
00:29:37
Speaker
And I think the whole Timothy Chamele thing kind of showed a passion level amongst our supporters that I thought was really
00:29:47
Speaker
invigorating it was kind of nice to see on an international level this uh waving of a flag we've always understood in ballet and dance that we're not the number one most popular thing but that we're also an absolutely fundamental part of it all that's my advice ballet's not going away we're here we have to keep adapting we have good years bad years and certainly covid was really rough and we're still working out how to bring people back into theaters all of us movies opera ballet but i feel like ballet in houston is doing well and could do better but just keep on soldiering on so what's your five-year plan what are you excited about coming up well next year i'm working on a adaptation of an alice in wonderland it's called where's alice it's a modern take of alice so that's currently what i'm
00:30:42
Speaker
involved in the musics by the band members from Nine Inch Nails. For me that's really kind of fun because I've never done anything like this. So I love the excitement of a Frontier that I've not explored. A full evening ballet to a classical story told in a modern way to music that is very modern that's fun I think that's exciting and I like the challenge amazing last question I have for you if you had to give aspiring professional dancers who are pursuing their careers one piece of advice what would you tell them ballet is ballet is not always good at loving you back and I think you have a great love affair with it
00:31:24
Speaker
and you have to understand it will leave you and how do you move through that and i think that to me is something that i always had in my head and i guess because i'm multi-generational ballet family so i'd seen retirement i'd lived through that with my parents when i was 13 14 and you know it's early in that transition And I wonder for people who don't have that experience that I had, do they know how short these are and that that's not anyone's fault? And it's part of the excitement of our career and the excitement of the art form that is this little flash and
00:32:04
Speaker
It's only in that moment and it never gets repeated. But that's the beauty of it, right? That's the beauty of the live show. So it's weird advice. I think that's very true. And I think that is a unique perspective to have seen your parents go through yeah retirement as a teenager. i didn't realize they were still dancing professionally when you were a little bit older. So you saw that as like very cognizant of that happening. Yeah. i mean, I remember clearly like ah about 11 visiting mum in hospital and she'd had a surgery and her foot was so sensitive the sheet had to have like a protector to not touch her foot and thinking why is she going to this job where she's now on crutches that's in the day when the Australian Ballet didn't pay you when you were injured you were paid by the working period also you know they had no
00:32:53
Speaker
Richard PhD.: : childcare or anything in those periods, so I really feel for mom at that time and how hard it was to be a dancer and a mother. Richard Tubb, : And that that all their friends went through retirement, so all the generations of the Australian ballet that I know were by staff members and then teachers and coaches and retired so I got to witness that ahead of myself.
00:33:14
Speaker
all the time it felt like ballet was forever it was just the dancing part that was small so I never viewed it as it's just this and then I'm something else it was like this is it and this part's only a portion of it if that makes sense yeah I think that's really good advice and that's really good perspective as you go throughout your career to realize there's always something more if you want to stay in this ballet world you'll find a way to make that happen from being a doctor that cures injuries to being a podcaster, to being a reviewer, choreographer, designer, you can bring it back
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:33:49
Speaker
to ballet. I love seeing people joining our board that had gone through our school and have gone off and had a huge career in something else and now coming back to ballet. That's the thing, yeah.
00:34:00
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you so much for this. This was such a fun conversation. Thank you. If anyone listening wants to learn more about you or about Houston Ballet, where can we find you? at Houston Ballet, I think are on our website. And of course, anytime that we're touring, we we have tours coming up next year. So please come and see us. yeah Perfect. Thank you so much.
00:34:20
Speaker
Thank you.
00:34:24
Speaker
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00:34:36
Speaker
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00:34:50
Speaker
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