CHRISTIAN BROWN TO JOIN HOUSTON BALLET AS DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
Houston, Texas – Houston Ballet is pleased to announce that Christian Brown will join its senior management team as Director of Marketing and Public Relations. Mr. Brown will be responsible for coordinating all of Houston Ballet communications strategies and overseeing the company’s marketing, public relations, and ticketing services departments.
“I am extremely pleased to have Christian join Houston Ballet’s team,” said Executive Director Jim Nelson. “His knowledge and experience in the Houston arts scene is a great asset to our organization and I look forward to working with him as the company continues its growth.”
A Houston native, Mr. Brown attended college at Baylor University, where he received a Bachelor of Business Administration in Music & Entertainment Marketing from the Hankamer School of Business. He then joined Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS), where he rose to become Assistant Director of Marketing and Sales, a position he held from 2010 to present. In this position he oversaw the organization’s rebranding efforts and acted as the company’s spokesperson. Mr. Brown was also a contributor for the American Marketing Association and currently works as a guest lecturer at University of Houston Downtown and Lone Star College.
“Joining the Houston Ballet team is genuinely a dream come true,” said Mr. Brown. “Houston Ballet is one of the finest, most relevant arts organizations in the world and I am privileged with the task of spreading the good news locally, nationally and internationally.”
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About Houston Ballet
On February 17, 1969 a troupe of 15 young dancers made its stage debut at Sam Houston State Teacher’s College in Huntsville, Texas. Since that time, Houston Ballet has evolved into a company of 55 dancers with a budget of $24.5 million (making it the United States’ fifth largest ballet company by number of dancers), a state-of-the-art performance space built especially for the company, Wortham Theater Center, the largest professional dance facility in America, Houston Ballet’s $46.6 million Center for Dance which opened in April 2011, and an endowment of just over $69 million (as of June 2014).
Australian choreographer Stanton Welch has served as artistic director of Houston Ballet since 2003, raising the level of the company’s classical technique and commissioning many new works from dance makers such as Christopher Bruce, Jorma Elo, James Kudelka, Trey McIntyre, Julia Adam, Natalie Weir, Nicolo Fonte, and Edwaard Liang. Executive Director James Nelson serves as the administrative leader of the company, a position he assumed in February 2012 after serving as the company’s General Manager for over a decade.
Houston Ballet has toured extensively both nationally and internationally. Over the past fifteen years, the company has appeared in London at Sadler’s Wells, at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, Russia, in six cities in Spain, in Montréal and Ottawa, at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in New York at City Center and The Joyce Theater, at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, and in cities large and small across the United States. Houston Ballet has emerged as a leader in the expensive, labor-intensive task of nurturing the creation and development of new full-length narrative ballets.
Writing in Dancing Times in June 2012, dance critic Margaret Willis praised Houston Ballet and highlighted the fact that “During his own tenure, (Stanton) Welch has upped the standard and Houston Ballet now shows off a group of 55 dancers in splendid shape. With fast and tidy footwork, they are technically skillful and have strong, broad jumps and expansive, fluid movements. The dancers’ musicality shines through their work, dancing as one with elegance and refinement – and they are a handsome bunch too!…if ballet were an Olympic sport, see Houston Ballet well on the way to achieving gold.”
Houston Ballet Orchestra was established in the late 1970s and currently consists of 61 professional musicians who play all ballet performances at Wortham Theater Center under music director Ermanno Florio.
Houston Ballet’s Education and Outreach Program has reached approximately 33,500 Houston area students (as of the 2013-2014 season). Houston Ballet’s Academy has over a thousand students and has had four academy students win awards at the prestigious international ballet competition the Prix de Lausanne, with one student winning the overall competition in 2010. For more information on Houston Ballet visit www.houstonballet.org.
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