Saint Louis Ballet is led by artistic director Gen Horiuchi (pictured above), the only living and still dancing protégé of the father of American ballet, George Balanchine. To celebrate Horiuchi’s 15th anniversary with the company, it will kick off its 2015-2016 season with Best of Balanchine: Serenade and Western Symphony on Oct. 10. Horiuchi, whom Balanchine personally invited to join New York City Ballet in 1982, will dance a cameo role in Western Symphony.
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Business and civic leaders Maxine Clark and Bob Fox recently donated $7.5 million to The Brown School of Social Work at Washington University for programs that promote community engagement and bring attention to policy issues. The couple also is giving $540,000 to the Gephardt Institute to double the number of students benefitting from its Civic Scholars Program. Clark is the founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop, and Fox is CEO of the residential closet organizing business NewSpace Inc. and founder of the nonprofit Casa de Salud.
Washington University chancellor Mark Wrighton and his wife, Risa Zwerling, are the inaugural honorees for Provident’s Spirit of Provident Award. The nonprofit, which offers counseling, suicide prevention and community outreach, seeks to honor those dedicated to bettering quality of life in St. Louis. The couple will be recognized at a Feb. 26 gala at the Four Seasons hotel.
Irene Hannon of Des Peres recently won her third RITA Award (the Oscars of romance fiction) from Romance Writers of America and was inducted into the Romance Writers Hall of Fame, an honor given to only 16 authors in the organization’s 35-year history. The former Anheuser-Busch senior communications executive won her most recent RITA for her best-selling suspense novel Deceived. Hannon is married to former A-B executive Tom Gottlieb