Obsession, grief, and passion, told through his tales.

October 3rd, 5PM at the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore

This October, Ballet 5:8 brings The Curious Life of Edgar Allan Poe to Baltimore — the city where Poe’s life ended and his legend endures.

Just blocks from Edgar Allan Poe’s gravesite, this groundbreaking new ballet by Julianna Rubio Slager and Glorielle Niedfeldt reimagines the writer’s inner world through the stories that made him immortal. Blending neo-classical ballet with African Diaspora movement traditions, the production moves through love, loss, madness, longing, and redemption with haunting theatricality and emotional force.

Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of America 250, the work explores Poe not merely as a literary icon, but as a man wrestling with grief, beauty, and the meaning of a fleeting life

“The conception of the ballet was stunning. There aren’t words to convey how it was able to capture the life of Poe and present it with dance. It was marvelous.”
— Hal Poe, author, Poe scholar, and living relative of Edgar Allan Poe

Come for the mystery. Stay for the heartbreak.