Events

Richmond Ballet brings the iconic Carmina Burana to the Gaillard Center stage with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and the Chorus. Set to Carl Orff’s masterful choral score, John Butler’s Carmina Burana is one of the most popular works in the Richmond Ballet repertory. Witness the brazen strength and hypnotizing passion behind Butler’s choreography in this groundbreaking ballet of the 20th century.

Originally choreographed in 1959 for New York City Opera, John Butler’s powerful, impassioned masterwork Carmina Burana uses the full breadth of Carl Orff’s choral score to explore the melding of classical ballet’s structure with the earthiness of contemporary dance. Using carminas, or songs, discovered in a Bavarian monastery to form the basis of the Latin text, Carl Orff’s chorus sings of earthly pleasures, while lamenting the powerful and heavy hand of fate. Sixteen dancers create an abstract landscape of movement, celebrating the joys of spring; living the pleasures, extravagances, and despairs of tavern life; and closing with passionate love poems. Sixty years after its creation, Carmina Burana remains a bold and astonishing audience favorite.