Carmina Burana

THE ARTS IN PHILADELPHIA

I managed to obtain two tickets for the final performance of "Carmina Burana" Saturday night at the Academy of Music, presented by the Pennsylvania Ballet. (It's been the hot ticket in town for over a week.) A fantastic show which lived up to all the hype. Passionate, powerful, tremendous music and wonderful dancing. Pure art-- a great experience. The hall was packed, the crowd enthusiastic.

I was thinking the whole time that this is the kind of experience which literature-- in great novels and poems-- needs to get back to providing. Huge crowd pleasing ambition. Interesting to me was how the "new," the modern, was built on the foundation of classic ballet.

Literature can achieve the same thing and thereby renew itself as an art form-- in the same way ballet has been renewed with this amazing production, unlike any other you'll see. But those who create and promote literature need to think bigger than they're doing.