How do you spice up one of the most ubiquitous, recognizable pieces of music from the 20th century?
Easy: Add some some aerial dancers and beer kegs.
“Carmina Burana,” that bracing cantata first staged by Carl Orff in 1937, features a host of familiar melodies. The chilling “O Fortuna,” for example, has been a staple of climactic battle scenes and movie trailers for decades. “Carmina Burana” also has been performed recently in Denver, Fort Collins and Pueblo.
But to recast the piece, Ars Nova Singers and Frequent Flyers Productions will team up for an audio-visual tour de force featuring nearly 100 singers, 11 aerial dancers and sundry percussive elements. Performances run Saturday and Sunday at the Macky Auditorium on CU-Boulder’s campus.
“It’s a piece that goes in cycles throughout the country, and knowing that, we wanted to bring something unique to it,” said Thomas Morgan, founder and conductor of Boulder-based Ars Nova.
“It’s almost one of those pieces like ‘Messiah’ that’s been done to the point of being overdone.”
Reinvigorating “Carmina” also meant returning to its roots. Orff originally intended the piece – adapted from a collection of 13th-century poems and songs – as “total theater” meant to overwhelm the senses. Bringing an acrobatic element to the piece seemed an apt idea.
Nancy Smith, founder and artistic director of Frequent Flyers, believes there has never been an aerial dance theater version of “Carmina.”
“Early productions featured huge burning swans, wheels of fortune and other displays,” she said. “People have gotten away from doing those types of things. We’re not setting anything on fire but we’re using the entirety of the stage space, including the vertical space.”
The music of “Carmina” is divided into sections such as “In Springtime,” “In the Tavern” and “The Court of Love.” Those familiar with the piece will understand when Cupid, Pan, Helen of Troy and Venus appear on stage.
While the embodiment of the lyrics can sometimes seem comedic, Smith hopes the energy of their depictions will leave audience members gasping. Drapery, steel structures and, yes, flying beer kegs will support the dancers as they move between the stage and the air.
“The ground-based choreography is a lot of tripping and falling and catching each other, and the aerial work is falling down the fabric,” said Smith. “The beer kegs are like rolling logs. They’re suspended so you can stand on one and run as the kegs spin, then we climb up on the ropes above them and hang.”
Two other pieces will open the show (“Spem in Alium” and “Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine”) but the main attraction is the dance/music collaboration. Morgan felt the timing was right to team up to try something different for Ars Nova Singers, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.
“Both of our organizations have achieved a certain level of national recognition, so it made sense to have these two groups in a similar space,” Morgan said. “This particular form of dance allows for more unexpected things to happen with the audience.”
Morgan tracked down as many of Ars Nova’s 206 alumni as he could and extended anniversary invitations for the “Carmina” show. After assembling 93 of them he set upon the difficult task of cementing specific tempos for the music, as a ballet conductor would.
“In terms of artistic decisions we really had to get the timing of the music down, but I think the overall result is something that was collectively created,” he said.
The name recognition of “Carmina” has meant brisk ticket sales for the production, which will appropriately be staged in the gothic, 2,300-seat Macky Auditorium.
“A lot of our ticket buyers are coming specifically because they love ‘Carmina Burana,”‘ said Smith.
True, but they’ve never seen anything like this before.
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-820-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
“Carmina Burana”
SATURDAY-SUNDAY|Presented by Ars Nova Singers and Frequent Flyers Productions|Macky Auditorium, CU-Boulder, 17th and University|$12-$34|Group discounts available; dairy.org or 303-444-7328|OPENS SATURDAY|8 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday
