Walters plays with the theme of past and present, having dancers appear and disappear magically in and out of the darkened upstage area, made more mystical by a foggy haze and angular lighting. The agitated sections of the Quartet are matched by dancers running, stopping short and changing directions, often in intricate patterns. The lyrical passages are generally given to the couples, for whom Walters has provided many stunning lifts and combinations.Lighting designer Ross Kolman supplied several unique moments, including lighting only the top half of the stage into which dancers were lifted as if from underwater. The Ciompi Quartet gave the Glass work vibrancy and tension, validating the work as more substantial than many of Glass’s earlier compositions.Robert Weiss, Carolina Ballet’s artistic director, has put much creativity into the conception of “The Kreutzer Sonata,” a storyline ballet with spoken text based on the Tolstoy novella of the same name. The work employs music from the Beethoven piano and violin sonata, Janacek’s “Kreutzer Quartet” (also inspired by the novella) and newmusic by J. Mark Scearce.Weiss takes a grand approach to this dramatic story of a jealous husband who suspects his wife of an affair with a violinist. From the opening sequence in a brothel, to the scene in which the married couple becomes estranged, to the stage-filling ballroom section, Weiss uses the music tellingly to delineate character and emotion.His most brilliant feat is choreographing the whole first movement of the Beethoven, which is being played for the ball guests by the wife and the violinist, to show what is going on in the husband’s mind as he watches them. The intensity of the music is perfectly matched by the frenzied choreography, superbly realized by Marin Boieru (husband), Melissa Podcasy (wife) and Timour Bourtasenkov.The Ciompi, joined by Jane Hawkins, easily handled the shifts between styles and composers. Scearce’s contributions make clever use of themes from the other works, but his music stands alone, atmospheric and appropriate. This is his finest work heard to date.

The device of an actor as the husband interspersed into the ballet has merit in helping the audience understand the plot. Librettists Linda Belans and Will Graham have done an intelligent job of distilling the essence of the story.