Broken Wings

Stanton Welch AM was born in Melbourne to Marilyn Jones OBE and Garth Welch AM, two of Australia's most gifted dancers of the 1960s and 1970s.  He joined The Australian Ballet, rising to the rank of leading soloist and performing various principal roles, before serving as Resident Choreographer. During his decades long career, Welch has choreographed over 100 works including audience favorites Madame Butterfly (1995), Clear (2001), and Divergence (1994). His work can be seen in the repertoire of The Australian Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and Birmingham Royal Ballet, among others. In July 2003, Welch was appointed Artistic Director of Houston Ballet, America's fourth-largest ballet company. Welch has choreographed more than 40 works for Houston Ballet, including Marie (2009) and spectacular stagings of Swan Lake (2006), La Bayadère (2010), Romeo and Juliet (2015), Giselle (2016), The Nutcracker (2016), Sylvia (2019), and Raymonda (2025). Developing Houston Ballet into a choreographic Eden, Welch has commissioned over 30 works from notable choreographers such as Mark Morris, Aszure Barton, Dwight Rhoden, Trey McIntyre, and Justin Peck, while expanding the company’s repertoire with works from internationally acclaimed choreographers including George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, John Neumeier, Twyla Tharp, and Jerome Robbins. Under Welch’s leadership, Houston Ballet has appeared across the globe including recent engagements in Tokyo, Dubai, Melbourne, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Welch continues to nurture the next generation of artists through the Houston Ballet Academy, a leading institution in dance education and training. 

Composer of the bestselling The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier & Clay for The Metropolitan Opera, Mason Bates is imaginatively transforming the way classical music is created and experienced as a composer, DJ, and curator.  With electro-acoustic works such as Mothership and multimedia projects such as the animated film Philharmonia Fantastique, Bates has become a visible advocate for the modern orchestra and imaginatively integrates it into contemporary culture.

His deep relationship with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he was appointed the nation’s first composer-in-residence, continues with recent performances of his Grammy-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs.  Championed by legendary conductors from Riccardo Muti, Michael Tilson Thomas, Marin Alsop, and Leonard Slaktin, his symphonic music is the first to receive widespread acceptance for its unique integration of electronic sounds.

Named as the most-performed composer of his generation, Bates has also composed for feature film, including Gus Van Sant’s The Sea of Trees starring Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts.  He is also a passionate advocate impacting the next generation through classical/club shows produced by Mercury Soul and his educational ecosystem Sprite’s World, which reaches hundreds of thousands of students and teachers across the country. 

Jiří Kylián (Czech Republic 1947) started his dance career at the age of nine, at the School of the National Ballet in Prague. He left Prague when he received a scholarship for the Royal Ballet School in London in 1967.  After this, he left to join the Stuttgart Ballett led by John Cranko and in 1975 Kylián became artistic director of the Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague (NL). In 1978 he put NDT on the international map with Sinfonietta. That same year, he founded Nederlands Dans Theater 2, which was meant to function as a breeding ground for young talent. He also initiated Nederlands Dans Theater 3 in 1991, the company for older dancers from ‘forty till death’. This three dimensional structure was unique in the world of dance. After an extraordinary record of service, with an oeuvre of almost 100 ballets, Kylián handed over the artistic leadership in 1999, and remained associated to the dance company as house choreographer until December 2009. In the past years, Kylián has directed four films, Car-Men (2006), Between Entrance & Exit (2013), Schwarzfahrer (2014) and the award winning Scalamare (2017). 

A musical prodigy from the age of six, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is considered by many to be the greatest musician of all time. His legions of works include famous pieces for symphonies and operas, choral and piano; nearly every piece is considered a masterpiece of the classical music form.

International acclaim is nothing new for Mozart. Believing him a gift of God, his father exhibited Mozart’s manifest talents to the world. Acclaimed in his own era, Mozart was well regarded as a man of unique musical abilities and talents by his contemporaries.

His works were prodigious. Beginning at age 10, Mozart composed fifty symphonies during his life. In his youth, he was knighted by the Pope and performed for the King and Queen of England. Gifted with “perfect pitch,” Mozart’s inborn abilities as a natural musician became increasingly evident the older he grew. Other seemingly supernatural gifts were equally stunning. It was not uncommon for young Mozart to pick up an instrument and play it without a single lesson.

At twenty-five, Mozart married and settled in his homeland of Austria. Although Emperor Joseph of Austria briefly employed him, Mozart struggled to clothe and feed his family. Ironically enough, the emperor clothed Mozart in fine apparel and bestowed upon him the gift of a large ring to be worn during performances.

Mozart wrote every genre of music known to him, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music, church music, operas, and operettas—most of which are regarded as masterpieces today. Among his most acclaimed works are the operas Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, and The Marriage of Figaro. Although Mozart died at the age of thirty-five, his legacy on western music is profound: not just in terms of sheer numbers, but in their emotional impact, his works include the frivolous and lively to the solemn and morose.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa is a prolific, award-winning choreographer that has created more than a hundred ballets for 86 dance companies around the world such as the Dutch National Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, English National Ballet, Gothenborg Ballet, The Washington Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Queensland Ballet, West Australian Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Ballet du Grand Theatre de Genève, Miami City Ballet and New York City Ballet to name a few. A versatile choreographer, Lopez Ochoa's wide-ranging body of work includes short conceptual pieces, full-length narratives, and short dance films. Since 2019, Annabelle is the program director of the Contemporary Ballet Summer program of the School at Jacob's Pillow. Annabelle has been recognized with multiple choreographic prizes such the Hannover choreographic competition and the Bornem choreographers’ contest. She is also the recipient of multiple awards such as the UK Dance Award for Best Classical Ballet, Villanueva Award, South Bank Sky Arts Award, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award and in 2025 he received the Dance Lab NY honors. Described by Wendy Peron (Dance Magazine USA) as "one of the world's busiest choreographers”, Lopez Ochoa is one of the few female choreographers who excels in narrative ballet. She has successfully created 15 narrative ballets to date such as FRIDA, Coco Chanel, the life of a fashion icon, Doña Peron, Callas, La Divina, and A Streetcar named Desire. In April 2025, Annabelle premiered a brand-new full-length version of Carmen for Miami City Ballet, and in March 2026, she will create Gentleman Jack for the Northern Ballet. The production was awarded with the European FEDORA Dance Prize. Starting with the season 2025/26 Annabelle has been appointed Resident Choreographer at Dortmund Ballet, a position she shares with choreographer Edward Clug.

Peter has been composing almost exclusively for Contemporary Ballet for the last decade completing his 10th ballet in April 2025 with the critically acclaimed score for Dutch National Ballet’s Lady Macbeth. His first collaboration with Annabelle Lopez-Ochoa was working on the award-winning A Streetcar Named Desire for Scottish Ballet and since then he has written scores for many of Annabelle’s ballets: Frida (Dutch National Ballet), Doña Peron, (Ballet Hispanico), Coco Chanel: the life of a fashion icon (a co production for Hong Kong, Queensland and Atlanta Ballet) and The Little Prince (BalletX). They are currently completing Gentleman Jack for Northern Ballet. Other ballet scores include Camino Real for Atlanta Ballet, The Crucible for Scottish Ballet and Emma Bovary for The National Ballet of Canada. In 2019 he was nominated for the ‘Outstanding Artistic Contribution’ award at the UK National Dance Awards. His extensive theatre work includes many scores for productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Royal National Theatre and Shared Experience Theatre and his media work including dramas and documentaries for the BBC is also internationally renowned, particularly his music for the first four series of BBC’s Call the Midwife which won him a Music and Sound award in 2015.