Carolina Ballet was launched in 1997, under the direction of artistic director Robert Weiss, to serve the ever-expanding Triangle community that includes Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, Fuquay-Varina and beyond.

After eleven successful years, Carolina Ballet looks ahead to the 2009-2010 season.  The season includes a selection of story ballets from the company’s repertoire – Swan Lake, Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet, Sleeping Beauty and Messiah; a premiere ballet simply called Picasso in collaboration with Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art to coincide with the Picasso exhibit “Picasso and the Allure of Language”; and the Raleigh premiere of Bournonville’s La Sylphide.  The Cinderella program will include a sampling of  Balanchine from the company’s repertory; and there will be a new ballet by Lynne Taylor-Corbett on the program with La Sylphide.  Half of the programs – Swan Lake, Picasso, Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet - will be performed in the intimate Fletcher Opera Theater over three weekends per show; while La Sylphide, Messiah, Sleeping Beauty and the traditional annual Nutcracker will be performed in Raleigh Memorial Auditorium.

Carolina Ballet has long been praised for its story ballets – Terry Teachout said in the Washington Post “the best story ballets of the past quarter-century are currently being choreographed by Robert Weiss in Raleigh”; the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praised Messiah when Carolina Ballet performed it in Budapest, Hungary saying “choreography Europe needs to see”; and Roy Dicks wrote in his review of Robert Weiss’ Romeo and Juliet “there are not enough accolades in my arsenal to accurately describe Romeo and Juliet, it was a triumph on several levels.”  With accolades such as these, one can only look ahead with anticipation to the company’s twelfth season.