Carmina Burana review: Modern take on medieval musings is raw, ungainly, but ultimately infused with joy

The National

24-05-2025

You don't have to be a ballet buff to recognise the opening bars of Carmina Burana, currently being staged at Dubai Opera until May 24. Ominous and powerful, the music of O Fortuna - that opens and closes this ballet - has become instantly familiar thanks to its overuse on the silver screen. It has been used in Excalibur (1981) The Doors (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994) - plus countless advertisements, from instant coffee and Old Spice aftershave to Gatorade. So famous is its opening fanfare, in fact, that any performance risks being upstaged by its own overture. Yet, at Dubai Opera — where Carl Orff's piece is being staged by Edward Clug, the artistic director of the Slovenian National Ballet — the sparse, sinuous production ignores the cliche and returns the music to what it is: an exploration of the human spirit. Clug's interpretation is so visually and emotionally arresting that he is able to restore the music to its rightful place of being terrifyingly beautiful. Composed in 1936 by Orff, Carmina Burana is inspired by 11th and 12th century Bavarian manuscripts, written by hedonistic, wandering student-poets known as goliards. Although scholars now question this attribution, it remains a meditation on the human experience: the intoxication of love and the absurdities of life, against the omnipresent hand of fate. Divided into chapters, each deal with a different emotion that remains as relevant today as when it was written 700 years ago. Love, sensuality, the awakening of earthly pleasures, as well as cynicism, spiritual desolation and parody, are all overshadowed by fortune's wheel that hangs menacingly over the stage. This circular motif is repeated through the dance too - as a tightly packed circle, each dancer leaning on the next; as a vast loop covering the stage, the dancers linked just the tips of their fingers; or as individuals, who spin in tight, compact spirals. It signals the ticking of time and a continuous thread that binds us all together. The entire set is likewise a giant circle, part halo, part enclosure and ever-present. Sometimes playful, as when two dancers embrace in a field of legs, moving in the breeze. It can be foreboding, descending almost onto the dancer's heads, this reduction echoing the poem's monastic origins. Yet, despite the brevity, this is a work of surprising tenderness and sensuality, as well as wit, such as when the dancers shiver with insect-like twitches. Clug's taut choreography is beautiful, as a tender embrace, and also difficult to watch, as awkward flailings or rigid tension. It is also demanding, with the dancers, led by Evgenija Koskina, and a 30-strong cast, including Asami Nakashima, Catarina De Meneses and Tijuana Krizman Hudernik, on stage almost every moment. But the raw essence of humanity being laid bare before us is what makes Clug's staging so powerful – it is raw, ungainly and ugly, but also exquisite and infused with joy. Despite the incidental fame of O Fortuna, the rest of the piece is grounded in an almost medieval spirituality that is powerful and sinewy to behold. Clug's work is a reminder that great art, when entrusted to the right hands, will always be astonishing. Carmina Burana is at Dubai Opera until May 24.