Carolina Ballet

Carolina Ballet was launched in 1997, under the direction of artistic director Robert Weiss, to serve the ever-expanding Triangle community that includes Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Research Triangle Park, Fuquay-Varina and beyond. Going into its tenth anniversary season, Carolina Ballet, with a budget of $5.3 million, is being recognized as one of the top ten ballet companies in the country. The company totals 32 dancers and during the 2007-2008 season will perform in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Winston-Salem and Wilmington.

Carolina Ballet’s tenth season offers an expanded program of seven productions on the subscription package, and the holiday season favorite Nutcracker. The company will offer a family subscription of two ballets to appeal to younger audience members, and the season will highlight several ballets of principal guest choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett. The season opens with Taylor-Corbett’s Carmina Burana to the ever-popular, pulsating score of Carl Orff, accompanied by the North Carolina Master Chorale under the direction of Alfred E. Sturgis. Also on the program will be Robert Weiss’ Petit Ballet Romantique to Leo Delibes music from Sylvia and La Source which Roy Dicks describes as “a tribute to 19th-century romantic ballet…the 30-minute piece is a vision of airy, bright movement, spotlighting five pairs of soloists in distinctly varied pas de deux.” Over Thanksgiving weekend, Carolina Ballet will present the first of its family programs, Cinderella & Peter and the Wolf. Robert Weiss is creating new choreography for Peter and the Wolf set to the well known Prokofiev score. The program will be performed to live piano music. Nutcracker opens this year in Chapel Hill, November 30-December 2, at Memorial Hall on the UNC campus and then retursn to Raleigh Memorial Auditorium December 14-23. In February 2008 cabaret singer Andrea Marcovicci performs live on stage with the dancers in a reprise of Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s Cabaret, and later in the month Carolina Ballet will present a program of Balanchine ballets for two weeks at the A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater. George Balanchine’s Raymonda Variations will highlight the program. In March Chapel Hill’s The Red Clay Ramblers return to perform with Carolina Ballet in Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s Carolina Jamboree. This is a wonderful mix of blue grass, Dixieland jazz and ballet. Carolina Ballet will present the Raleigh premiere of Waltzes of Old Vienna in April. Robert Weiss choreographed this very elegant ballet, to the music of Johann Strauss II, in Wilmington, NC during the company’s first summer residency on the campus of UNC Wilmington in July. The season closes with a brand new Sleeping Beauty choreographed by Robert Weiss after Marius Petipa to the magnificent score of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. Sleeping Beauty is the second program on the new family subscription series. Please join us for this spectacular 10th anniversary season.