Houston Ballet Revenue and Competitors

Since his arrival as director of Houston Ballet's Ben Stevenson Academy in 2003, Stanton Welch has had a profound influence on the students of the academy, specifically with his increased standard of excellence, his involvement with each level of the academy, his working relationship with teachers and his vision of what the academy means to Houston Ballet itself. This high standard of training has been recognized internationally. In 2010, Emanuel Amuchastegui, 18, a native of Argentina and a student at Houston Ballet Academy, won the coveted Prix de Lausanne ballet competition, a four-day competition in Switzerland among 70 elite pre-professional dancers ages 15-18 from across the world. Academy student Aaron Sharratt, 17, placed fifth in the 2010 competition, winning a scholarship to cover a year's worth of study at an international ballet school. And Liao Xiang, a student from Houston Ballet Academy who was born in China, advanced to the final round of the competition. In 2009, Sebastian Vinet, an academy student originally hailing from Chile, won a sixth prize at the Prix de Lausanne.