Spoleto Festival USA
May 28 – June 13
For 17 days and nights each spring, Spoleto Festival USA fills Charleston’s historic theatres, churches and outdoor spaces with performances by renowned artists and emerging performers in disciplines ranging from opera, theater, music theater, dance, and chamber, symphonic, choral and jazz music, as well as the visual arts.
Spoleto Festival USA has firmly established itself as one of the world’s major arts festivals, presenting a program of non-stop arts events since its inception in 1977. One of the Festival’s tenets is to provide young performers the opportunity to work with veteran directors, designers and performers.
The 34th season of Spoleto Festival USA will take place May 28 – June 13, featuring numerous U.S. and festival debuts and the return of several audience favorites along with the reopening of the newly restored Dock Street Theatre, Charleston’s most beloved theatrical space.
After a meticulous three-year restoration, the Dock Street Theatre reopens with a series of high-profile events, including a new production of Flora, An Opera, an 18th-century English ballad opera with a deep connection to Charleston. In another Dock Street Theatre homecoming, longtime festival favorite, Ireland’s Gate Theatre, brings Noël Coward’s sparkling comedy of manners, Present Laughter to Charleston. Audiences will also welcome the return of the Bank of America Chamber Music Series.
The 2010 dance program embraces both the classical and contemporary poles of dance. Representing classical ballet at its most pure is Nina Ananiashvili, the legendary prima ballerina, along with her Tbilisi-based troupe, the National Ballet of Georgia, in a dreamily metaphysical Giselle. At the other end of the classical spectrum, the all-male ballet troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo performs Peter Anastos’s witty Go for Barocco in an irreverent and loving homage to the art form.
This year’s music program includes three virtuosic string-based ensembles: the internationally renowned Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, celebrated for their lively interpretations of West African Bambara music; New York’s Ebony Hillbillies, whose roots in jazz, blues, bluegrass, rockabilly, rock-and-roll and country are credited with rejuvenating traditional African-American string band music.
Emmanuel Villaume, the Christel DeHaan Music Director for Opera & Orchestra, will lead the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra in two concerts. The first will feature Ravel’s La Valse, an early 20th-century masterpiece and Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. The second program will include works by Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner.
The visual arts component of the 2010 festival will include partnerships with both the Gibbes Museum of Art and the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art.
To purchase tickets or see a complete list of performances and venues, please visit
www.spoletousa.org, or call 843-579-3100.
Die Roten Punkte. Photo by Christina Fiedler.