By Roy C. Dicks,

- Against all odds, a classical choral work built on medieval poems has seeped into the consciousness of America's pop- obsessed culture.

The thundering chords, powerful rhythms and ominous voices of the “O Fortuna” section of “Carmina Burana” have been called on repeatedly to set a mysterious, primordial mood. The music has been heard in movies from “Excalibur” to “The General's Daughter” and on sitcoms including “Friends” and “The Office.” Michael Jackson and Ozzy Osbourne have used it at concerts. Capitol One set its raiding barbarian commercials to “O Fortuna,” and it signals the New England Patriots' entrance at Gillette Stadium.

The music's appeal to choreographers is less surprising than its embrace from the people who made “Jackass: The Movie.” But the extent to which ballet and modern companies – including Raleigh-based Carolina Ballet – dance to “Carmina Burana” is remarkable.

German composer Carl Orff (1895-1982) based this 1936 composition on poems and songs from a 13th-century manuscript by clergy and students describing the gamut of life from sacred to profane. The hourlong cantata was a hit from the start. With more than 125 recordings by virtually every major orchestra and choral group, it regularly makes iTunes' list of top 10 classical downloads.

“Carmina Burana” is most often performed in concert, but Orff originally conceived it as a theatrical piece with visual design and movement. John Butler was the first choreographer to capitalize on its memorable tunes and catchy rhythms with a 1959 work created for New York City Opera.

Today, more than 30 dance companies have a “Carmina Burana” in active repertory, some using the Butler version but most creating their own. They range from long established stagings by Fernand Nault (Les Grands Ballets Canadiens) and Kent Stowell (Pacific Northwest Ballet) to recent ones by Stanton Welch (American Ballet Theatre) and Dwight Rhoden (Columbus' BalletMet). There are productions in every part of the world, from Cairo to Madrid, Caracas to Vilnius.

Robert Weiss, Carolina Ballet's artist director, staged the Butler choreography when he was artistic director of the Pennsylvania Ballet. The company had participated in the New York premiere and kept it before an adoring public with numerous revivals. N.C. State University's old Friends of the College series brought the company to Raleigh for two performances of the Butler “Carmina” in 1984.

Weiss saw no reason to change the choreography while he was in Philadelphia. But when he came to Raleigh as Carolina Ballet's founding artistic director, he wanted a new version.

“It was time for an updated approach,” he said.

Lynne Taylor-Corbett, who choreographs for Broadway, film and ballet, was reluctant to take on “Carmina” when Weiss first asked her.

“I'd seen John Butler's and others' versions and I really didn't think I had anything new to offer,” she said in a phone interview from New York City. “But the minute I said that, I started thinking how our lives revolve around money and power and that things haven't changed much. One day I was looking at the Nasdaq listings going round and round the building on Times Square, and I realized I could make a story set today but one that is also as old as the hills.”

Taylor-Corbett's idea of man's fate (“O Fortuna”) springing from the vagaries of Wall Street gives her creation a unique perspective compared to the medieval or abstract settings of other versions, none of which employ a concrete narrative. Her story starts with a lowly worker in a Wall Street firm who gets lucky with a lottery ticket, marries a waitress from the company cafeteria, and uses his money to move up the financial chain. Life is good until he gets involved in an underhanded deal, a shady character lures his daughter, and his wife secretly longs for a fellow worker. The Wheel of Fortune soon thrusts the husband down from the heights.

Taylor-Corbett made up the story as she went along, sometimes feeling she had taken on too much, but finding that the music ultimately told her where to go with it next.

“The music's rhythmic bedrock makes it very appealing and it has a deep, deep mystery to it,” she said. “The hardest sections were those that sound almost Eastern, with large portions of silence versus music. I had to make the stillness interesting.”

For one such section, she uses slant boards, similar to those movie stars lean on when dressed in complicated costumes. Here, they give the illusion of two bedrooms, one with the man and his wife, the other with the delivery man the wife dreams about. Her dreams are made real as they leave their separate beds to dance a yearning pas de deux to the haunting strains of soprano, baritone and chorus in the “Courtly Love” section.

The company opens its 10th anniversary season with its third staging of “Carmina Burana.” As in 2001 and 2005, the N.C. Master Chorale supplies the vocal forces. Chorale director Al Sturgis says audiences always respond to the music.

“The music is attractive because it's so rhythmically powerful, especially with all the percussion – tam-tam, gong, timpani, snare drum,” he said. “People respond to these primal sounds.”

The hardest part is getting the Latin text correctly enunciated, especially with the quick tempos and densely worded phrases. Sturgis is pleased that Taylor-Corbett consulted him on all the timings.

“We debated whether to put the texts in the program so people could see how well they related to Lynne's interpretations,” he said, “but we decided they would be too distracting and the audience should just get it all from the music and the choreography.”

Get it they do, based on the response at previous presentations in Raleigh and Winston-Salem.

“Its modern day approach is easy to relate to,” Sturgis says. “It's certainly a ballet for those who don't think they like ballet.”