Ballet Ensemble of Texas’ (BET) announces their 2023 Spring Season, which will highlight the company premiere of Artistic Director Thom Clower’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, and culminating with a four country international tour!
The annual CELEBRATION OF DANCE will be held Friday, March 31st and Saturday, April 1st, 2023, at Irving Arts Center. Additionally, BET will present A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM at Coppell Arts Center Friday, April 14, 2023, making their inaugural public performance at the new facility.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM will be the BET inaugural performance of Shakespeare’s tale of adventure and misadventure, about a group of mortals and immortals afflicted by the difficulties of loving and being loved. We find ourselves in a forest where, especially at night, the realms of faeiries and mortals mingle; unbeknownst to the mortals, the faeiries live, observe, and, upon occasion, dabble in human affairs. Shakespeare’s comic fantasy of four lovers who find themselves bewitched by nearly 100 faeiries is a sly reckoning with love, jealousy, and marriage. For centuries it’s been one of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays.
BET will finish the season traveling abroad with the Stars of Tomorrow International, visiting Hungary, Germany, Austria, and Italy. 50 travelers from our company will be joining the tour, and the dancers will perform for approximately 10,000 people during the two week tour! Thom Clower, Artistic Director, said “We are thrilled to be able to extend the dancer’s education past the studio, into all parts of the world! This is the second trip abroad for BET, and I know the events they will experience will expand their knowledge, not only of dance but of life in general!”
BET is the official performing company of the Ballet Academy of Texas and trains dancers who are recognized by prestigious pre-professional training programs across the country, with more than half of BET’s 32 company members placed in such programs last year. Professional alumni also dance with companies around the country, including four former BET dancers currently performing with American Ballet Theatre, America’s National Ballet Company.
As a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization, the company is funded largely by donations, and is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Coppell.
