Christina Gianelli Christina Gianelli is the resident lighting designer for the Houston Ballet. A native New Yorker, Ms Giannelli was educated at Yale College and the Yale School of Drama. In 1986, after several years lighting dance and theater in New York City and production managing and designing new works at the Williamstown Theater Festival she moved to Houston to work for the Houston Grand Opera. Since then she has worked as a lighting designer for all of the “majors” and many of the “minors” in Houston’s performing arts community. Her opera credits include over a dozen productions under the auspices of Houston Grand Opera, for whom she served as lighting director from 1986-1990. Theater credits include the lighting designs for nine shows at Houston’s Alley Theater. Her ballet credits are numerous. Since 1987, when she first joined Houston Ballet, Ms. Giannelli has designed the lighting for the world premieres of Stanton Welch’s Four Seasons, Nosotros, Indigo and Bruiser, Trey McIntyre’s Peter Pan, Skeleton Clock, Curupira, Touched, Second Before the Ground, Bound and The Shadow, Ben Stevenson’s Eclipse, Don Quixote, Five Poems, and Twilight, Glen Tetley’s Lux in Tenebris, and Christopher Bruce’s Hush, among others. She has designed the Houston premieres of Sir Frederick Ashton’s La Fille Mal Gardée and Les Patineurs, Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, and new works for Julia Adam, Dominic Walsh, Natalie Weir and Lila York. When not working with Houston Ballet, Ms. Giannelli freelances extensively with ballet and opera companies around the country and abroad. She was the resident lighting designer for the Cleveland San Jose Ballet from 1993-1996 and is currently the resident designer for Texas Ballet Theater. In the course of her career she has had the privilege of lighting such legendaries as Placido Domingo, Carmen de Lavallade, Rudolph Nureyev, Carlos Acosta, and Sigourney Weaver among others. Locally, Ms Giannelli has served on the Boards of Zocalo Artists Yard, Infernal Bridegroom Productions, the DiverseWorks Artists Board and the Houston Dance Coalition’s Board of Directors. She was the recipient of a Houston Arts Alliance Individual Artists Grant in 2009. To support and further the work of Houston’s Contemporary Dance artists Ms Giannelli founded Dance Source Houston, a service organization for dance in the greater Houston area. The organization produces the annual Weekend of Texas Contemporary Dance at Houston’s Miller Outdoor Theatre, now in its fifteenth year. Other projects include a website, houstondance.org, a mailing list, and the Dance Card. She joined AlienNation Co. in the conceptual and scenographic development of the new "MIRAK" opera project that will be premiered in December 1999, and designed the lighting for the premiere at DiverseWorks. She also had a role as a vocalist in MIRAK. In 2007 she participated in AlienNation Co.s research and development for Puntos de Fuga, a new multimedia play for which she will design the lighting. Her own collaborative new work was featured in Focus, premiered January 0, 2010 at Hobby Center, Houston. Produced In collaboration with Aurora Picture Show and Musiqa, Focus is the the second of Musiqa's 2009-10 subscription concerts, offering an eye-opening mix of film, lighting, and music.