Feature: Stanton Welch, the Success and Failure

Just in time for the opening production of the Houston Ballet 2015-2016 season, the sensuous romance MANON, BroadwayWorld.com releases its discussion with Stanton Welch. In the interview, Welch talks family, career, and love. Family, career, and love at the Houston Ballet, of course.

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Chris and Liam Hemsworth. Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. The MAD MAX franchise. "Shrimp on the barbie."

All treasured imports from the great country of Australia. The subject of this BroadwayWorld interview, Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch, is another of its wonders. And he almost makes up for Vegemite all on his own.

Houston Ballet's original artistic director, the luminary Ben Stevenson, passed the torch to Welch, 32 at the time, in 2003. Since then, Welch has given the company a reputation for perfectly balancing ingenuity and current-ness with classical technique. During his 12 year tenure, the company has risen to the 4th largest ballet company in America and built the $46.6 million dollar Houston Ballet Center for Dance, the largest professional dance facility in America.

In addition to his successful run as Houston Ballet artistic director, he is an accomplished dancer and choreographer in his own right. Also, he is a member of an Australian dynasty of dance, which includes his brother Damien Welch, former principal dancer with the Australian Ballet; mother, acclaimed classical dancer and teacher Marilyn Jones; and father, choreographer and dancer Garth Welch.

But Welch is less boastful about his successes. "I feel like I've just started," he says. Even with decades of successful ballets behind him, he considers his legacy in a state of flux. "It all still feels like the ball is up in the air. It hasn't landed yet to know if it's a failure or success." Even when I list his accomplishments, including his most recent honor, the Order of Australia Award, he demurs. "I keep looking around for my father," admits Welch. "Where's dad?" he laughs. "When there are favors to ask, it's me. When they say 'Mr. Welch,' it's me."

Naturally, now that Welch is the paternal figure, he prides himself on the success of his children. "I'm just coming to the age now as director where I have dancers that were in our school like Connor [Walsh] and Jessica Collado, and now they've come all the way to principal rank and they're in the senior element of the company. That's fulfilling for me. [He laughs] That feels like something I've done."

Maybe guardian is a better word. He protects his company and fosters an atmosphere of personal achievement. Soloist Lauren Strongin, who has danced as principal in several Welch creations including his signature pieces DIVERGENCE and MADAME BUTTERFLY, says "Stanton gives lots of opportunity to soloists and corp [de ballet] dancers ... He gets you ready [so that] you're confident and free to explore your depth ... It's just a really unique company in that everyone is just encouraging to each other and is very family like in that way."

When asked about his company's reputation for collaboration and support (as opposed to high-octane toxicity), he explains. "I always think that dancers want to dance," says Welch. "And [that] when they're invigorated and inspired by the rep[ertoire] and feeling like they're in a constant cycle of opportunity, that there's less of that."

Every dancer is equally a star. "One night Karina Gonzalez is Juliet and Melody Mennite is the prostitute in act two, and then on the next night, they switch. Well, that builds a sense of team because you're not resting, you're there supporting your fellow colleague." And every role is as important as the next. "[Switching roles] lifts the bar of how you all feel and your emphasis toward a certain role and towards a certain performance. I think that's a special thing about our company."

Strongin agrees. "Everyone understands that, if someone is out of line, it doesn't make them look bad - it makes you look bad. It's everyone working towards the same thing."

Family and community are important to Welch - whether it's involving the Houston community or creating a community among his dancers. The Bizet score in DIVERGENCE, the boundary pushing classical ballet that launched Welch's career, was given to Welch by his mother.

"That's a little bit of the Australian [in me] - culturally. I think it's very much how I was raised and it's also what I enjoy to dance." It's also what he likes to choreograph. Welch's CLEAR, even with its solos, is a group work, says the New York Times. "We are a community and we are a company in the old sense of the word - a collection of family that are drawn together because we love one thing. And our shared love of that thing is what brings us together. ... I've used it before, and I've gotten into trouble, but it's a religious experience, in a way, when you love an artform so deeply. We're all from different countries. We're all raised differently. Yet we all come together, and we all share the love of this one thing."

Still, as a guardian, he is as much disciplinarian as egalitarian. "I don't want to muck around. I don't want to do it twice. I want to do it at a hundred. [Laughs]" Luckily for all involved, Welch and his dancers agree. "I love the work energy here. I've always loved that. I love how dancers in America come into the studio and how they're there and it's 100 percent straight from the first day."

What does 100 percent look like? Does he just work seven days a week?

"Pretty much," he says. "It comes and goes in waves. It's been pretty heavy the last year or two. ROMEO [AND JULIET] was probably the Everest of ballets. And to climb that every month took on extra work. Additionally, this year, we did three separate programs from our normal eight programs. We did LA BAYADÈRE in Canada. We did a Hamburg [program] with three ballets. And we did Giselle in Detroit."

But when does he eat and sleep?

"I don't eat well," he laughs. "And you know, I've always stayed a grazer. I think that might just be from dancing a lot. And sleep - I don't sleep. I'm a night owl ... Most of my ballets are made up between midnight and 3 in the morning. That's just when I feel everything is quietest and no one is contacting me and I can be the character. I can spend three hours being Romeo or I can spend three hours being Giselle and that's what you need to do."

And that's just the fun stuff. According to Welch, his artistic director duties are where the work begins. Not the search for choreographers and new talent - that's barrels of fun - but all of the mechanical stuff, as he calls it, budgets and contract negotiations. It's a trudge, but Welch finds that balance is key. "You can get all frustrated in the morning debating a contract issue for nine hours and go in and watch a wonderful show or have a great rehearsal or see a school kid achieve something they've never done before. It's that counterbalance."

"Balance is a daily discussion. And to me the balance is creativity."

Welch's career hasn't been all kittens and koalas. Even wunderkinds get bad reviews. In 2012, dance critic Margaret Fuhrer said in the Huffington Post of DIVERGENCE, "the pas de deux and ninth movement ... are painfully tacky treatments of bits of Bizet's L'Arlésienne." At the time, Fuhrer was the associate editor of Dance Spirit and Pointe magazines. Now, she is Editor in Chief at Dance magazine. When I ask Stanton about failure, he agrees in ethos with Taylor Swift, "You've got to shake it off. You've got to get back up, shake it off, and get ready ... If you get a bad review or you do a bad show, you can't spend too much time thinking about it. You've got to recognize it [but] you've also got to be tough enough and brave enough and proud enough to do the next show."

Besides, he says, "I always feel like a bit of a failure. I don't mean that in a negative. I just mean you always want to look at your work and really go, 'OK, I could have done that. I should of done that. Let me fix that.' And the nice thing with ballet is it's alive and, when it comes back, you do have the ability to change it. There's often not much that you get stuck with. So I think, until I'm dead, they're all still in progress."

If that sounds unbelievably optimistic, you can rest assured that Welch is a real person with real feelings. "I don't sit down and analyze them straightaway. I think the emotion's too raw. I normally shift a project. And, luckily for me, choreography for me is still a joy, not a job ... So if I come home and I'm feeling a bit down, I'll just start throwing myself into making another thing. After a year or so, I'll go back and start writing down what I want to change or what went wrong. And, normally, when it restages is where I'll try to start again."

There is only one permanent failure in Welch's book. "I'd love to be able to get Houston to a place-nationally-where people stop associating us to the negative parts of Texas. Internationally, I feel like we've already done that. And, that's an interesting thing to me. I feel, as an ambassador to Texas, that I want to get everyone in America to come and spend a few weeks in Houston. [I laugh] I really do! Because I think that there's a lot of built-in prejudice... That is something that I often reflect on." Welch continues, and for the first and only time in the interview, his affability and optimism drops. "If I leave this job and I haven't impacted that at all, that would make me feel like a failure."

With so many balls in the air, it's clear that Welch hasn't reached his nadir by a long shot. There's still the knighthood, which Welch isn't thinking of at all. "I would just like to keep [dance] in public consciousness. I think that the way you serve your artform is to make sure that it's vibrant and alive. And that doesn't mean successful, and that doesn't mean popular. It means alive, and it means talked about and thought about and young people being inspired to participate in it. And that, to me, is what all of us are trying to do. So that, to me, is really what I think you do for dance. You want to whether you're a choreographer or a dancer a coach [or] teacher, a director, whatever it may be. You're trying to make sure that the world understands how important dance is. And that it is alive and around with us for many centuries yet to come. I think that that's what we're all here trying to do."

"We can change the world. If we can just get everyone to understand that." It's powerful stuff. We should all thank our lucky stars that Mr. Welch uses his charm, selective memory, and tireless-ness to make dance, not war.

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The Houston Ballet begins its 2015-2016 season with Sir Kenneth MacMillan's modern classic MANON. MANON charts the romantic adventures of beautiful femme fatale Manon and her two suitors-the sweet and earnest but impoverished student Des Grieux and the monied Monsieur G.M.

BroadwayWorld.com editor Jenny Taylor Moodie says of the piece: "The choreography is dramatic, multifaceted, and refreshingly detailed, with innovative steps and lyrical, exotic lifts ... [MANON] is a visual feast." Read Moodie's full review of MANON here.

The ballet runs September 10 through 20, 2015. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on September 10, 12, 18, 19 and at 2:00 p.m. September 13 and 20. For more information about MANON, the upcoming Houston Ballet season, and more, please visit houstonballet.org/.