Hurricane Harvey hit Houston’s entire arts community hard, but the heaviest blow fell on the Wortham Theater Center, which is expected to remain closed until at least mid-May of next year. One significant byproduct of the damage has been the uncertain fate of Houston’s flagship performing-arts event of the holiday season, Houston Ballet’s The Nutcracker.
The ballet put those questions to rest Monday afternoon, however, announcing that The Nutcracker will split its 2017-18 run between the William P. Hobby Center downtown and the brand-new Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land, which opened this past January.
Dates of this year’s production will be December 10-23 in Sugar Land and December 30-January 6 at the Hobby. According to a statement from the ballet, subscribers already holding Nutcracker tickets will be notified of their options regarding the relocated performances. Tickets for either location start at $25 and go on sale to the general public this Saturday, October 14, at houstonballet.org.
Among many other shows, the damage at the Wortham has also forced its other principal tenant, Houston Grand Opera, to relocate its upcoming production of Verdi’s La traviata to a makeshift theater inside the George R. Brown Convention Center known as “Resilience Hall.” Those performances run October 20 through November 11; see houstongrandopera.org for more information.
This article appears in Oct 5-11, 2017.
