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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > September > 28 > Entry
Review: Ballet Austin’s ‘Carmina Burana’ and ‘Kai’
Ballet Austin opened its new season this past weekend with three sold-out performances at the Long Center — with 6,920 attendees, a record-breaker for the company, more than any other season opening program its presented.
Likely it was the reprise of one of Ballet Austin’s most popular creations — Stephen Mills’ dance interpretation of Carl Orfff’s super-popular choral piece ‘Carmina Burana,’ sung by Grammy-nominated Austin choir Conspirare with the Austin Symphony Orchestra that was first presented in 2005.
Musically, this ‘Carmina Burana’ was spectacular with Conspirare director Craig Hella Johnson and the choir magnificently handling Orff’s challenging rhythm-based score and ever-changing tempo with aplomb and style. Baritone David Small, tenor Tracy Jacob Shirk and soprano Suzanne Ramo skillfully sung the challenging solo arias with Ramo bringing impressive warmth and clarity to her solos. In the pit, conductor Peter Bay and the Austin Symphony Orchestra clearly reveled in Orff’s musical histrionics.
Mills’ choreography finds an ultimately celebratory and revolutionary mood in Orff’s colorful interpretation of medieval songs of fate and fortune. Never mind the ominous and distracting metalwork contraption that loomed above the dancers clad in short colorful unitards. Was that contraption an abstract Wheel of Fortune? It was impossible to tell.
Groups of dancers romped and even tumbled at times during the 60-minute piece, sometimes evoking contemporary balletic spin on folkdance or maypole celebrations. But the corps — particularly the male dancers — lacked basic unison and synchronicity made all the more noticeable given the percussive, rhythm-driven nature of Orff’s raucous music and Mills vaguely abstracted choreography. As the polished sounds of Conspiare’s voice surged forward at Saturday night’s presentation, the dancers seemed pressed to keep up.
The program opened with ‘Kai,’ another reprise of a work by Mills and wholly opposite in mood to the sturm-und-drang of ‘Carmina Burana.’ Set to the music of John Cage, ‘Kai’ employed Mills’s signature angular geometries of ballet movement.
As the lead duo, Jaime Lynn Watts and Frank Shott proved again why they are always a rewarding pair to watch. But again, an inattention to unison of movement by the ensemble weakened any sophistication to this performance of ‘Kai.’
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By Melissa Markham
September 29, 2010 9:09 PM | Link to this
To me, this night was proof that Carmina Burana should be heard and not seen. I sat through most of the performance with my eyes closed. The magnificent music can scarcely be matched by anything, but especially not by a few pasty dancers in cheap-looking leotards. (And turning ‘O Fortuna’ into a striptease?!?) Halfway through the night, I worried that the experience might ruin Orff’s music for me forever. But Carmina Burana is a mighty musical fortress not so easily assailed. Whenever its siren song sounds, I shall come running. But I will not tread lightly again to the Austin Ballet.