Review Juliet and Romeo by Royal Swedish Ballet

Saw Mats Ek's Juliet and Romeo by Royal Swedish Ballet. The choreography is the most interesting. It has a shred of ballet hidden in mostly the modern dance. It's hardly even modern dance in which various motions resembling tai-chi, yoga,martial art, etc. The overall effect is the whole show represents a minimalist's approach to show the union between nature and human while young love and age-old hatred were put on spotlight. It's mystical yet earthly, with Ingmar Bergman type of imagery.

Visually we saw various types of birds' motions representing characters' emotions and mindsets, sea waves, rolling stones in front of waterfall, to name a few. The stage sets are minimalist with dark wood wall as the center piece. The Wall serves as background as well as the aid to dancers' movements. It also was a media to manipulate the stage light so as to show human emotions through change of color tones and shadow reflections.

The music was taken from Tchaikovsky's various orchestra works rather than the famous Prokofiev's ballet, Romeo and Juliet. It was fun to recognize the pieces being played: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto 1 the first movement (Prince scene), Andante Cantabile (love scene), Italian Symphony (nurse, Romeo and his two friends), Manfred (before Juliet's death), to name a few.

It was a little hard to follow the story line. I guess the story-telling is not Ek's main intention. Everybody knows the story anyway. The main idea is to put the eternal meaning of human love and hatred in a modern setting. It is to let audience to feel, rather than witness, that as strong as young love's passion, the same is true for hatred. It's the human world we are living in. It's the human experience we all share.

2016.6.4