Talk:Houston Ballet

Marshall Strabala
The bit on Marshall Strabola is self serving and self promotional. The entire section was suspiciously added. This needs cleaning up. Formerly of Gensler is more accurate. But going on and on about his design approach is not relevant to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.128.83.160 (talk) 03:30, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Composition section
The following is cross-posted from Talk:Oregon Ballet Theatre.

Performer listing?
I removed the addition of the list of performers on the basis of not a resume repository or program guide. These can be found at 2.6: not a directory—items 4) not a directory, directory entries, electronic program guide and, 8) a complete exposition of all possible details. My removal was reverted in good faith by with the reason this is long-established practice for dance companies and no different than, say, NY Yankees.

I suspect this should be raised at Requests for Comment, but it appears several other ballet companies have similar listings. If sports teams do it, the logic goes, then everyone else should too. If that is true, then 2001: A Space Odessey is lacking several hundred names, since special effects teams are "performers" too, aren't they?

In such an article, there are no doubt notable performers, past and present, which should be mentioned and linked to their corresponding biographical article. But to list the whole company (or so it seemed) would be unlikely unless it happened to be a very special ensemble. The article is about the group and—to comply with WP:UNDUE—should mostly focus on the group. —EncMstr (talk) 04:02, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

A nearly identical matter was raised quite recently.
Quoting Articles for deletion/List of San Francisco Ballet 2012 repertory: "The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. 'Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page. The result was keep. User:Arxiloxos' comment best captures the rough consensus here. — Kubigula (talk) 04:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)"

And: "Keep all. After some reflection, I don't think any of the NOT arguments that have been raised apply here. This is certainly not 'directory' information, in the usual understanding of what a directory is, nor is it indiscriminate. I don't think there is any policy reason requiring these articles to be deleted. Instead I think it comes down to editorial discretion; while I can understand why some editors might think this is information overload, I think that Robert Greer, DGG, and Jjwatt have articulated good reasons why this information is valuable and enhances the encyclopedic coverage of dance on Wikipedia. At that point, the editorial balance should come out in favor of making this information available for the audiences that are interested in it. And one might also consider that Wikipedia has not, as a general matter, done as good a job covering the fine arts as we have with popular culture. I would hope we could do both. — Arxiloxos (talk) 04:08, 31 January 2012 (UTC)"

The difference between the dancers of the Oregon Ballet and the special effects technicians on 2001: A Space Odessey is that the former are performers and possess much the same unique talents as the New York Yankees. Special effects technicians would be more aptly compared with the grounds crew and clubhouse attendants at Yankee Stadium or the stagehands at the Keller Auditorium or Newmark Theatre, and nobody proposes adding the latter to this article — or the former to the Yankees'.

Nor does anyone propose deleting the players' names from the NY Yankees article, and the only difference between that article and this is that more people watch baseball than go to the ballet. — Robert Greer (talk) 21:03, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

End of cross-posting

Subsequent discussion of performers list
Neither are the words "including several who have won gold and silver medals at major international ballet competitions" either "weasel word[s]" or "puffery". Accordingly I have restored the Composition section. — Robert Greer (talk) 12:29, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Per others above, this violates WP:UNDUE. I wouldn't list each Yankee, either, but they all meet N, for better or worse. Discuss the important members in the prose. I will revert. Feel free to RfC. Novaseminary (talk) 14:31, 22 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You appear to be ignoring the keep decision in the related discussion quoted above as well as the clear opinion of at least two until now (and clearly now three) editors of the article. It is entirely acceptable for you to try to persuade the community to accept your opinion, that is how consensus evolves, but there is clearly no consensus to remove this information at present. I will respond to at least some of your concerns by looking at the earlier content you also removed and if I restore that I will probably tidy up the Houston bio references a bit. I have looked at that version and your edit summary suggesting that the reference format was incorrect seems completely unfounded, although I think we can improve the presentation a bit. There is also at least one wikilink to be added. I will post a further update here a bit later. --Mirokado (talk) 21:05, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't ignore anything. An ed reinserted material removed in August. I disagreed, reverted, and noted it here. I'm not sure what an unrelated AfD discussion has to do with whether this article should contain an embedded list. If several of the performers meet N (maybe even if not), it seems a SAL might be appropriate. But listing current apprentices on a main article that doesn't mention the contributions of particular stars in the prose strikes me as odd. Novaseminary (talk) 21:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Assuming we keep this list, do we really need a reference to each performers page on the Ballet website? I think a single ref to the list would suffice. Novaseminary (talk) 21:30, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. I have more-or-less finished the tidying up I was mentioning, there may be one or two more wikilinks to be added. I agree that so many bio refs get a bit out of hand, particularly in that in makes it more difficult to notice any other refs and perhaps reduces any motivation for other editors to find better refs. In an award article I look after from time to time I tried quite hard to find good third party refs for each person mentioned, which I think adds more value to the article. If we remove the individual bio refs, we should add a note to the single remaining ref that it has links to individual biographies. --Mirokado (talk) 21:37, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What about spinning this off into an SAL? That would take care of any UNDUE problem within this article; and it wouldn't favor current performers over past performers in the discussion unless current performers have reason to be mentioned more as the story is told. (I do think the ”keep” AfD discussion noted above is relevant to an SAL discussion here, if not as useful in deciding content for a particular main article.) That way the main article could stay focused on the Ballet's narrative. That sould also more naturally allow for listing (in separate sections) the performers from past seasons, or at least those past performers with WP articles (or who should have WP articles). While the New York Yankees might have a current roster (though I don't think it should), I wonder if a better analogy isn't to faculty at a university. None of the Featured Article university articles list faculty, but they all have SALs of faculty. Novaseminary (talk) 02:48, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Excellent suggestions! I agree completely:  spin off the performer list into a List of Houston Ballet performers, or the like.  And the same for Oregon Ballet Theatre and List of Oregon Ballet Theatre performers.  This set of changes would address all my concerns.  It would be very useful to add the years of activity.  —EncMstr (talk) 05:09, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Y Done The two list articles have now been created (List of Houston Ballet performers & List of Oregon Ballet Theatre performers). Now I think it entirely appropriate to add prior seasons at those lists. Also, currently none of the Oregon list's performers are have articles. But I noticed several of the principals are mentioned in other articles and lists, too, and are probably notable if anyone wants to cretae stubs or articles. I'll redlink the ones a quick search makes me think pretty clearly desrve an article (others might, too). Novaseminary (talk) 04:50, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think we need a section in the main article covering the dancers in general which could include information about the company's structure (which grades of dancer, responsibilities of each grade, recruitment and training practices and so on) which can then have a link to the list. There is also currently no information about the repertoire in the article. --Mirokado (talk) 08:27, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. I'm not a huge fan of ”see also” sections housing links like this (or pretty much most links) for the long term, but as I alluded in the edit summary, I just saw listing it there as a placeholder until a better place could be found. You idea strikes me as just right. Novaseminary (talk) 14:26, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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Removed season section
I removed a subsection dedicated to the company's 2018-2019 season. --SpiritedMichelle (talk) 02:09, 30 October 2020 (UTC)