Carolina Ballet and The Red Clay Ramblers join together in the Carolina Jamboree to bring an eclectic music and dance experience to North Carolina’s community. In a unique collaboration, the Tony Award-winning string band was invited by Carolina Ballet’s artistic director, Robert Weiss, to create a musical composition set to movement by Broadway choreographer, Lynn-Taylor Corbett.
Despite the lack of adequate funding for the arts, Weiss has plans to precipitate growth both in production and finances for Carolina Ballet through a diverse repertoire and a company of unique dancers. With 31 talented members, a vigorous 32-week contract, 55 performances and guest choreographers, Carolina Ballet has approached its new season with new ideas that will promote an increased public awareness for the company. The Jamboree is thus the perfect vehicle to stimulate artistic appreciation in the Triangle through a blend of different art forms.
“This is an effort at audience integration,” Weiss said. “People who love bluegrass and Dixieland music will be attracted to see the ballet, something they ordinarily may not have seen.”
The Red Clay Ramblers use as many as 20 to 30 instruments to create a New Orleans and classic folk sound that makes the group more than just a bluegrass band.
The band's members—Jack Herrick, Clay Buckner, Chris Frank and Bland Simpson—have been involved in music composition and musical theater since 1972. Natives of Chapel Hill, the group began performing at the Cat’s Cradle. Their popularity has grown significantly, allowing them to perform extensively on Broadway.
“We work in an element that draws from old-time music, jazz, classical and pop, but we are mainly interested in original work—that being the writing of new music for theater, dance and concert stages,” said Herrick, the band’s frontman.
“This latest partnership with Carolina Ballet is the result of Mr. Weiss’ idea to join us with Lynn Taylor Corbett, [who is] known, like the Ramblers, for very un-traditional work,” Herrick said. “I’m quite sure this new piece will be a lot of fun. It is a very ambitious work with new lively music. We greatly admire the originality of Lynn’s choreography.”
Both performing groups have high expectations for the Jamboree to increase artistic support, appreciation and sales promotion among the art community in the Triangle. Herrick commented that these types of projects bring the band’s music to a wider audience and provide the group with the artistic challenge of combining art forms.
The joint effort has also been a unique experience for the Carolina Ballet dancers. “We are used to performing in classical ballet works,” Tanner Martin, an apprentice with Carolina Ballet, said. “The Red Clay Ramblers have given us the means to perform in a more contemporary setting with upbeat and energetic musical accompaniment.”
Ballet dancers are driven by their passion for the arts, music, expression and movement. “The Ramblers have presented a new challenge for us as artists,” Martin said. “Accustomed to performing to Tchaikovsky’s scores, the bluegrass undertones bring out a new personality that helps to define the well-rounded dancer,” said Martin.
Argentinean dancer, Pablo Peraz, spoke of his experience with the Teatro Colon in Argentina. He remarked that Carolina Ballet created work of a different style then in Argentina. “In Argentina, we performed more classical story ballets. Here we do more contemporary—a style that I am beginning to really like,” he said.
Weiss spoke about the intricacy of casting when he said, “I looked for dancers who had a special sense of themselves so that they could communicate back to the audience.”
For Weiss, the ability to convey the meaning of music—be it Mozart or bluegrass—into the bigger form of movement, allows for that art to be individualized and perfected.
“My dancers have to have technique,” Weiss said. “But after that they have to possess something interesting artistically: their soul, their spirit, their intuition, the way they move; its something that makes them stand out from everyone else.”
The Carolina Jamboree will be held Feb. 24 to Feb. 27.
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