CriticalDance Forum

<B>Fatal attraction: It's been done as high art, as hip-hop, and even without the leading lady. Judith Mackrell explores ballet's fascination with Romeo and Juliet </B><BR>The Guardian - United Kingdom; Feb 23, 2002<BR>BY JUDITH MACKRELL<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Shakespeare's tragedy of adolescent love and hormonally crazed poetry has inspired choreographers for centuries. One of the first recorded ballet stagings of Romeo and Juliet was Vincenzo Galeotti's for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1811. Yet we tend to think of Romeo and Juliet as a 20th-century work, thanks to the fantastically popular ballet score that Sergei Prokofiev composed in 1935. This monumental three-act work (with a libretto faithfully pinned to Shakespeare's text) has made Romeo and Juliet one of the worlds most frequently staged ballets .Proof of its status as "a warm-weather Nutcracker" will shortly be seen when two of Britain's major companies revive productions of the ballet.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=020223000579&query=dance" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A><P><BR>If you haven't read the text for a long time, maybe dip into it again - it really is a wonderful piece of writing.

Romeo and Juliet is one of those stories you can't beat:<P><B>It's the way you tell 'em </B><BR>So what if there are no new stories? There are endless ways to breathe life into old ones, says Nicholas Hytner<P>Nicholas Hytner<BR>Guardian<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>It is a much-quoted maxim that there are only seven stories. They are, apparently, Orpheus, Achilles, Cinderella, Tristan and Isolde, Circe, Romeo and Juliet, and Faust. All other stories are adaptations of these. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4375096,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A><P>

<B>A surfeit of star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet is one of the most popular ballets to stage.</B><BR>But, wonders John Percival, has it been done to death? From The Independent <P><BR>Make love, not war. That's a crude but valid summary of Shakespeare's moral in Romeo and Juliet, and Maurice Bejart had dancers shout the slogan in his danced version. Unlike other choreographers, however, he treated the play's themes rather than its narrative, besides setting it to Berlioz's symphony, not the Prokofiev score that has come to dominate all other ballets in the last half-century. Dominate? And how! Not only are all four major English ballet companies performing Prokofiev's Romeo this spring, but a production from Lithuania turned up at the Barbican this month; and on radio you can hardly get away from the music.<P><A HREF="http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=020401001016&query=ballet" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><BR>

Even if you think you can't fit in one more Romeo and Juliet this year, or, indeed, this century, DO GO AND SEE Rome and Jewels when it returns to London in the autumn. It is superb. Click to our Dance Umbrella reviews for more of a taste: <A HREF="http://www.criticaldance.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000011.html" TARGET=_blank><B>Rome and Jewels</B></A><p>[This message has been edited by Emma Pegler (edited April 03, 2002).]