Ballet was created to deter the disruptiveness of bodies. It is
about control, mastery, and form—and it is awesome and
reassuring. It does not moan. So what do you get in most of the 80
ballet versions of Romeo and Juliet? Teenagers with no hormones.
Nobody copping a feel. No kissing—no way. Love is a platonic
thing that is impressive and repressive and wears its hair in a bun.
It’s nothing to do with sex.
That’s the Romeo and Juliet that Pacific Northwest Ballet
audiences had been watching for 21 years, choreographed by former
co–artistic director Kent Stowell (to the Tchaikovsky score). But
there is a new chestnut in town, introduced only 18 months ago and now
brought back already—thanks to popular demand—by the choice
of Peter Boal, who took over the company in 2005.
This Romeo and Juliet is Roméo et Juliette (to
Prokofiev’s score), choreographed in the mid-’90s by Frenchman
Jean-Christophe Maillot of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. Boal has beefed
up PNB’s short, experimental repertory, but his updating of Romeo
and Juliet with Roméo et Juliette is proof that he’s
undermining convention on all fronts, refusing to ghettoize
experimentalism. His unified vision can reach even the big-story
ballets. And the audience is eating it up.
It’s understandable: Roméo et Juliette is hot. It
seduces the audience with everything the dancers have, not just some of
it—their command and their release; their Olympian ability not
just to spin bolt upright but also to ache; their fingers, eyes,
mouths; their acting. Feels are copped. Making out is not symbolized:
It occurs.
Sex and acting are not Maillot’s only ideas. He bookends the
production with a terrifying, agonizing, insectlike Friar Laurence,
giving the harsh fatalism of the story an expressionistic emblem. In
the center of the action is another dose of raging modernism in the
form of Lady Capulet’s detonating grief. The set, costume, and lighting
design (by Ernest Pignon-Ernest, Jérome Kaplan, and Dominique
Drillot) are stark and elemental, not remotely Renaissance.
Spiky-haired Lucien Postlewaite as Roméo and
first-time-Juliette Carla Körbes are wholly, hopelessly lost in
their breathtaking world. (She’s less fiery than 2008’s Juliette,
Noelani Pantastico, who has since been stolen by Maillot’s Les Ballets
de Monte-Carlo, but she’s no innocent.) In fact, the whole company
brings off these steps as if it were in passionate love with them
(which almost sells cringeworthy moves like the repeated snaky arm).
Olivier Wevers etches his Friar into memory, but it’s ultimately the
stellar, endlessly limbed Ariana Lallone that part of you wishes you
could forget; her Lady Capulet is a gut punch. It’s not that this
Roméo et Juliette is perfect; it’s that it’s more
interesting than perfect could ever be.
The dancers were wonderful and the choreography stunning, as were the visuals. But was it Romeo and Juliet? Or just putting name to some passionate choreography? Had I not read the name on the program – it could have been anything. R&J is supposed to be based on a Shakespeare play. There was NO essence of Shakespeare anywhere in this production. A shame to steal the name yet not honor the bard. Also, the groundwork laid by the former artistic directors of PNB contributed greatly to where the company is today. It’s doing all of those who worked hard for 27 years building a world class ballet a huge disservice to think that it started with the new regime.
#1, you obviously don’t know the Shakespeare play all that well, because this R&J ballet does an amazing job of taking his words and transposing them into choreography. From Romeo’s original infatuation with Rosaline, to the interplay between Juliet and her nurse, and onward, I felt it was a beautiful and faithful interpretation of the story, while still taking some artistic liberties to make it a unique creation.
Actually, I thought there was a lot of Shakespeare in it…starting with all the hands/palms references. Some of the characters are spot-on Shakespeare. The nurse is fussy and silly and bawdy. Mercutio is his own “saucy merchant” self, “full of ropery.” The “fiery” Tybalt is the “King of Cats.”
What if you thought of Boal as building on what the wonderful former artistic directors created, rather than destroying it? (If you look, you’ll see that pre-Boal there were some hot contemporary works at PNB too: In the middle…Within/Without…Scripted in the Body…Artifact II…Jardi Tancat…)