Mailing Address
3401-131 Atlantic Avenue • Raleigh, NC 27604
Performance Hall
Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts
2 East South Street • Raleigh, NC 27601
(919) 719-0900
carolinaballet.com
2012-2013 Season
Evening of Robert Weiss
Featuring Symposium and a world premiere
September 13-30, 2012
Fletcher Opera Theater
To open the 15th season Carolina Ballet presents an evening of ballet by Robert Weiss highlighting several of his ballets created on the company. The centerpiece is Symposium, based on Plato’s dialogue of the same name and choreographed in 2004 to Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade.” It was hailed by The News & Observer as “Lovely, moving and perfectly matched to the music.” The program will also feature a world premiere.
A Balanchine Celebration
Featuring Who Cares? and other Balanchine favorites
October 11-28, 2012
Fletcher Opera Theater
Not only was George Balanchine the founding artistic director and choreographer of New York City Ballet, he choreographed on Broadway and in Hollywood as well. Holding a long standing personal relationship with George Gershwin, Balanchine created Who Cares? as an homage to Gershwin’s work. He challenged anyone leaving the theater after experiencing Who Cares? not to be walking on air.
Progress Energy Presents
The Nutcracker
With magic sponsored by WRAL-TV
November 23-December 23, 2012 Raleigh Memorial Auditorium
December 1-2, 2012 UNC Memorial Hall
December 29-30, 2012 Durham Performing Arts Center
The magic of Carolina Ballet’s new Nutcracker, presented by Progress Energy, premiered to a spectacular sold-out first season. It returns to the stage over Thanksgiving weekend through December 30. After the opening of Carolina Ballet’s new Nutcracker, The News & Observer wrote the “gasps after each eye-popping illusion, the applause for the handsome new sets and the rapt attention from all the children confirmed the changes were worth it.”
Evening of Lynne Taylor-Corbett
Featuring Code of Silence and singer Lauren Kennedy in December Songs
February 7-24, 2013
Fletcher Opera Theater
Evening of Lynne Taylor-Corbett shows the remarkable diversity of human emotion, the power of compassion and the anguish of lost love. December Songs, featuring Broadway star and Raleigh native Lauren Kennedy singing composer Maury Yeston’s song cycle, had its musical premiere at the 100th Anniversary of Carnegie Hall.
The Rite of Spring
March 7-24, 2013
Fletcher Opera Theater
100th Anniversary: Premiered May 29, 1913
The great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky created “The Rite of Spring” (Le Sacre du Printemps) for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe in 1913, which was originally choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky. He said at the time, “I tried to evoke the mystery and surge of the creative power of spring—like the whole earth cracking—I was guided by no system whatever, I heard, and I wrote what I heard.” This version choreographed for Oregon Ballet Theatre in 2009 by Christopher Stowell, was hailed by critics as “a sleek, sophisticated, thoroughly neo-classic version” of this famous ballet.
Fancy Free & Carolina Jamboree
Featuring The Red Clay Ramblers
April 18-21, 2013
Raleigh Memorial Auditorium
April 27, 2013
Durham Performing Arts Center
Fancy Free, the first ballet choreographed by Jerome Robbins, took New York by storm and propelled Robbins to a household name and led to a life of work on Broadway, in the movies, and in ballet. Fancy Free was so popular that it became the basis for the movie, On The Town, with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s Carolina Jamboree with the The Red Clay Ramblers is one of the programs that makes Carolina Ballet unique; the combination of ballet and bluegrass will have you dancing in the aisles.
Giselle
May 16-19, 2013
Raleigh Memorial Auditorium
Giselle, the touchstone of ballet for the Romantic era, is still being performed by every major ballet company in the world. Carolina Ballet is proud to add Giselle to its repertoire with amazing sets and costumes imported from Florence, Italy. Francis Mason, author of Stories of The Great Ballets, said, “Giselle’s innovation is its summing up of what we know as Romantic Ballet. To be romantic about something is to see what you are and to wish for something entirely different. This requires magic.”
