Community News

Roxey Ballet, New Jersey's professional contemporary dance company, is proud to present Carmina Burana at Roxey’s own Canal Studio Theater. This performance will be an interactive journey through the artistic sensibilities of founder and choreographer  Mark Roxey, and award-winning composer Ryan James Brandau. This performance is the pre-cursor to Roxey Ballet joining  >Princeton Pro-Musica and the  Princeton Girlchoir on Sunday May 21st at the beautiful Richardson Auditorium, in Princeton NJ as guest artists.

The structure of Roxey’s event will lend itself to audience interaction and the opportunity to ask questions of the work as it is being performed on the stage. The entire work will be broken down in verse, with the English read aloud, then the choregraphed work and music, followed by discussion. This is an incredible opportunity to see the work behind artistic creation and expression. The dance will be performed by  Roxey Ballets international professional company along with several trainees from The  Mill Ballet School who have earned the opportunity to dance in this incredible series.

Carmina Burana is divided into three sections – Springtime, In the Tavern and The Court of Love – preceded by and ending with an invocation to Fortune. Written between 1935 and 1936 for soloists, choruses and orchestra, it was originally conceived as a choreographed stage work. The songs (over 1000 of them) were written in a mix of Latin, German and medieval French by the Goliards, a band of poet-musicians comprising scholars and clerical students, who celebrated with earthy humor the joys of the tavern, nature, love and lust. Although Orff set the original texts, he chose not to use the primitive musical notation that accompanied some of the songs.