Pacific Northwest Ballet kicks off its 47th season by hanging a 26-foot-long, 2,500-pound golden wheel from the ceiling for founding artistic director Kent Stowell's Carmina Burana, a ballet based on a 13th-century medieval poem written by a bunch of saucy Catholic clerics. As a choir belts out one of the most dramatic—if not most played—pieces of classical music, "O Fortuna," more than 100 dancers do their thing beneath the wheel of fortune, embodying fate's random mood swings. PNB pairs this epic dance with George Balanchine's Agon, which Balanchine himself called "the quintessential contemporary ballet," according to press materials. by Rich Smith