#TANZ CARMINA BURANA SHEET MUSIC SERIES#
A series of beautiful if vague pas de deux and pas de trois suggest the amorous adventures of the youngsters. We see the joyous arrival of Spring (“All things are tempered by the sun, so pure and fine”), with 16 dancers presenting a multifarious array of styles ranging from the balletic to the loosely modernist.
Photo by Brett Pruitt & East Market Studios
#TANZ CARMINA BURANA SHEET MUSIC FULL#
The dark-robed chorus was so far upstage they seemed to be struggling to see either conductor (Ramona Pansegrau) or side-monitors: much less actually hear the musicians buried in the pit, which might explain why they were at times half a beat, or even a full beat, behind the orchestra. Baritone Armando Contreras delivered some of the most sonorous and pointedly dramatic singing I’ve heard from him. Sarah Tannehill Anderson was the soulful soprano, Daniel Hansen was the potent-voiced tenor. The set and lighting designs (by Trad A Burns) also include a trio of tiered platforms for the vocal soloists, who can at times be seen through the gaps in the panels and are costumed similarly to the dancers. The chorus, dimly lit and placed far upstage, sings “O Fortuna!” in stentorian tones, separated from the downstage dancers by a row of tall fabric panels. The ballet opens with our eyes on a tangled vertical structure, downstage-right, from which streams hourglass-like sand. Danielle Bausinger and Liang Fu / Photo by Ali Fleming
Alongside are two “helpers” (Danielle Bausinger, Liang Fu), who at times help him through his trials, but at times behave more like Job’s interlocutors. He dances, romances, revels in the joys of life, and rails against the inevitability of death. (Orff’s piece sets 13th-century poetry that is mostly in Latin and Middle High German, yet neither a translation nor even a synopsis was provided.) Nevertheless, Adam’s protagonist (Gavin Abercrombie on opening night) appears plausibly to be the “I” of Orff’s texts.
His lavish production of the hour-long piece, performed with the Kansas City Symphony and Chorus and three fine soloists, presents a male protagonist who suffers the slings and arrows of life, love, drunkenness, and (perhaps) near-loss of faith when confronted with the stark reality of the “wheel of destiny.” I say “perhaps” because the narrative line was not always crystal-clear, possibly by design: and even less so, I would think, for someone unfamiliar with the original texts. Dancer Gavin Abercrombie and baritone Armando Contreras / Photo by Brett Pruitt & East Market StudiosĪdam Hougland, whose new Camina Burana is the centerpiece of the Kansas City Ballet’s season-opener that began October 11th at the Kauffman Center, falls somewhere in the middle. Others have used the score (which includes orchestra, chorus, and three vocal soloists) as a kind of sound-design for a more fanciful, less literal narrative. Many dance-makers have set the 1936 musical milestone as dance theater, with a narrative that more or less mirrors the themes in the text: community and faith, love and courtship, destiny and death. And because so much of its rhythmic energy suggests dance, it’s hardly surprising that the score has proven a favorite among choreographers. Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana lends itself to the stage partly, perhaps, because the composer actually intended it to be performed as a sort of theatrical pageant, with sets, costumes, and even movement.
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