Carmina Burana

The noted choreographer Edward Clug has managed a powerful and poignant reinterpretation of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana for this production by the Ballet of the Slovene National Theatre Maribor, which has received generally enthusiastic reviews en route to Dubai .

The original is of course a 20th-century choral classic that draws inspiration from medieval verse and taps into timeless human themes of hope, love, and destiny; Clug has sought to highlight this, especially finding what he describes as “parallelism between the cycles of nature, especially during the spring awakening of nature, and human life and lust … It is the awakening of lust in the young body, which longs for the forbidden and unattainable (fruit), that represents the movement tension of the journey through twenty-four ‘songs’.

“The shape that spontaneously emerged was a circle that coincided with the circle of fortune from the first song of O Fortuna and was created by thirty dancers, each of whom aspired to the core of this perfect natural form. The narrower the circle, the more tension and force permeates its core.”

This is Dubai Opera’s last ballet of the season, and you can get tickets at half price if you use promocode BALLET50 when checking out. There are further shows tomorrow (24 May) at 5pm and 8pm.