The Houston Ballet takes a leap into streaming realms with the just announced premiere of the filmed ballet Elapse on the prestigious Marquee TV global streaming platform for the performing arts. HB first premiered Elapse to audience and critical raves as a part of their celebratory 50th season in 2019. The debut also made dance history as it was the company’s first ballet choreographed by internationally acclaimed Chinese choreographer Disha Zhang, as well as Zhang’s first work in the U.S.
Featuring a cast of 16 dancers – eight women and eight men – Elapse beautifully explores concepts of aging and time’s passage. Zhang set her dance to a haunting score by Zeng Xiaogang that combines wind and water sounds with the ancient stringed instrument, the guqin. In 2023, the company performed the dance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC as part of 10,000 Dreams: A Celebration of Asian Choreography and last summer brought the work back to the Wortham Center as part of their Four Seasons program. Now dance lovers around the world will have the chance to see the brilliance of the Houston Ballet dancers as they perform this exquisite and poignant ballet.
“The filming of Elapse is a significant milestone for Houston Ballet, as it is a meaningful way to share our artistry with a global audience,” said Julie Kent, Houston Ballet artistic director. “Marquee TV’s platform allows us to expand access to ballet and introduce new viewers to the depth and beauty of our work.”
Along with renowned international opera and theater productions, Marquee TV showcases dance performances from some of the most celebrated ballet companies across the globe, including the Royal Ballet, the New York City Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, and the Australian Ballet, so it is about time that the Houston Ballet gets its own place in the streaming spotlight. The subscription-based service costs $10 per month or $100 per year.
"The team at Marquee TV is very excited to be working with Houston Ballet in our shared mission to introduce the joy of dance to a global audience and to enable that audience to enjoy this wonderful premiere," said Susannah Simons, Director of Performing Arts at Marquee TV.
Elapse, of course, is not the first filmed production from the Houston Ballet, though it is the company’s first collaborative filming effort since Ghost Dances (1991) and the first to launch on a streaming platform such as Marquee TV. Dance lovers will likely remember that HB was one of the first Houston performing arts institutions to jump into producing filmed content during the pandemic, first with HB artistic director Stanton Welch’s, “Restoration” when the company danced through many beloved outdoor landmarks across the city to the music of the Canadian band, The Dead South. Later Welch choreographed the longer "In Good Company," also to The Dead South’s music, and filmed dancers alone on a stage and then edited the individual dancers together.
Photo by Amitava Sarkar (2024). Courtesy of Houston Ballet
Houston Ballet Principal Karina González and Corps de Ballet dancer Samuel Rodriguez in Disha Zhang’s Elapse.
As they take what they learned from these previous endeavors and now from Elapse, HB aims to expand their digital presence, making high-caliber performances more accessible to audiences around the world. The company plans to continue exploring new opportunities in digital storytelling and streaming to engage dance lovers everywhere.
