Too Many Romeo & Juliets

[Don Q Fan]

I think that it is about time the different ballet companies started speaking to each other as this season we are overwhelmed with a glut of R&J. I suppose one could say the same about Nutcracker but is it not just a bit ridiculous that there are so many all doing R&J in one season? Royal Ballet, ENB, BRB not to mention european companies.  The only one that might be slightly more interesting is Dutch National Ballet as they are doing a combined ballet and opera version.

I'd be interested in other peoples thoughts is it just me that thinks this?  It all just seems a bit "meh" to me!

 

[aileen]

I think that it's all about funding cuts and getting bottoms on seats. Swan Lake, R&J and Nutcracker sell and I think that each company will probably feature at least one or two of these most seasons. Plus, the companies probably don't regard a touring production of, say, Swan Lake as overlapping with, say, the RB's production in London.

[capybara]

Maybe the reason that ENB is not performing R & J in London (but is reprising Le Corsaire) is that they took account of the RB's schedule and thought that the potential audience would be 'R&J'd out' by January.

 

Maybe, also, some of the reactions on the RB R&J thread are indicative of a certain tiredness with the production creeping in already.

[FLOSS]

Given that it is fifty years since MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet received its first performance it was never on the cards that 2015 would be a Romeo and Juliet free year at Covent Garden. Lady M would have been very put out if that significant anniversary had passed unnoticed.

 

Then there is the 1616 factor. Next year we shall be commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare's death an excuse for ENB to put their Romeo and Juliet on stage again, that is if they felt that they needed one.Fortunately the Royal Ballet have Wheeldon's Winter's Tale to hand for that occasion.

 

In some ways it would be nice if the two companies could sort out their annual programming but that would mean that we would not get to see the productions that we prefer. So while in theory I like ENB's Swan lake because it has so much Ashton choreography in it in practice I find it disappointing because no one dances the choreography that well.Then there is the problem of casting if a company seems to be going out of its way to cast the least likely dancers in important roles you come away  feeling that you haven't really seen the ballet. Having lived outside London I don't think that a company's repertory should be overly influenced by what other companies are performing in London in a particular season. And while it would be nice to persuade audiences to  see other works it is very difficult to persuade audiences who want a good night out to pay to see something that they are concerned that they might not enjoy.Theatre history is full performances that we would love to have seen but which the contemporary audience did not rate as highly as the pantomime.

 

I seem to recall that in the 1970's when MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet was still a recent work that audiences didn't find themselves suffering from Romeo and Juliet fatigue if programming decisions forced them to see the MacMillan  and the Cranko version in the same year.But then who was going to complain about seeing Seymour and Wall. Sibley and Dowell and Cragun and Haydee in a twelve month? One of the things that was different,it seems to me, was that the dancers inhabited their roles and were not dancing the roles of Romeo or Juliet or Mercutio  to show the audience how beautifully they could execute the steps that the choreographers had set. They were portraying the characters in the same way that great actors do. This may sound strange to some members of the forum but you did not notice that Seymour or Haydee were dancing you saw them "being" Juliet and that makes all the difference to the number of performances you may want to see in a couple of months.

 

The performances all seemed far more urgent because the music was not played as moderately as it is now.MacMillan's balcony pas de deux had greater impact because it wasn't all danced at a moderate pace.Romeo's solos were impetuous and gave a real sense of being ruled by passion which meant that the moments of stillness had greater impact too.It seems to me that it is a question of casting and performance style. In the world of classical dance there are those who place emphasis on dance as an expressive art form and those who see technical display as an end in itself. In the imagination of a great choreographer the tension between the expressiveness and the technique can be the source of great inspiration.Perhaps too many of the dancers who we have seen recently appear to have been more concerned to be seen to execute steps correctly than they have been on the emotional impact of their performance.It seems to me to be more a question of recruitment,casting and coaching than choice of repertory that is the root of the problem..

Edited September 27, 2015 by FLOSS

[MAB]

 

The performances all seemed far more urgent because the music was not played as moderately as it is now.MacMillan's balcony pas de deux had greater impact because it wasn't all danced at a moderate pace.Romeo's solos were impetuous and gave a real sense of being ruled by passion which meant that the moments of stillness had greater impact too.It seems to me that it is a question of casting and performance style. In the world of classical dance there are those who place emphasis on dance as an expressive art form and those who see technical display as an end in itself. In the imagination of a great choreographer the tension between the expressiveness and the technique can be the source of great inspiration.Perhaps too many of the dancers who we have seen recently appear to have been more concerned to be seen to execute steps correctly than they have been on the emotional impact of their performance.It seems to me to be more a question of recruitment,casting and coaching than choice of repertory that is the root of the problem..

 

Absolutely!  Sums up the reason why I very rarely go to this ballet anymore.

[Angela]

What you have to consider as longtime ballet buffs: Romeo and Juliet is the perfect ballet for beginners, almost everybody knows the story. So I understand that it returns regularly at every ballet company, because they all must search for new audiences, for people who might not enjoy a modern triple bill or the perfect Petipa style of La Bayadére so much as a heart-breaking, tear-jerking story like R&J. For me it worked, some decades ago - with Marcia Haydée and Richard Cragun, by the way. And I'm still here   

[alison]

I think that it is about time the different ballet companies started speaking to each other as this season we are overwhelmed with a glut of R&J. I suppose one could say the same about Nutcracker but is it not just a bit ridiculous that there are so many all doing R&J in one season? Royal Ballet, ENB, BRB not to mention european companies.

 

DQF, I said pretty much the same thing about Cinderella (another Prokofiev score!) a few years ago - I think it must have been on the old site, because I can't find it on here.  Obviously it's not an anniversary that people are going to allow to pass by - and wasn't the Nureyev version created in 1975?  If so, it's celebrating an anniversary too.  Given that only a very small handful of balletomanes are actually going to bother going abroad to watch ballets, though, I can't see that we can complain too much about companies in different foreign countries deciding to schedule it.

[Don Q Fan]

Some very interesting thoughts so far.