Juliet’s Sorrow and Romeo’s Grief in Ballet

William Shakespeare’s tragic tale, the most famous love story of all time, has been touching hearts for centuries. Sergey Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet had its world premiere in Czechoslovakia, on 30 December 1938 at the National Theatre in Brno, and has ever since adorned the repertoire of all the world’s large stages. Romeo and Juliet has been traditionally among the most successful productions at the National Theatre. A new version of the celebrated title, conceived in the spirit of Neo-Classicist dance aesthetics, has been created by Petr Zuska, choreographer and Artistic Director of the Czech National Ballet. It will be the sixth version presented by our company in its history. Premiere: 14 November 2013 at the State Opera 2nd premiere performance: 15 November 2013 at the State Opera Appearing in the lead roles: Queen Mab – Nikola Márová / Miho Ogimoto Friar Laurence – Viktor Konvalinka / Alexandre Katsapov Juliet – Marta Drastíková / Andrea Kramešová Romeo – Ondřej Vinklát / Francesco Scarpato Mercutio – Mathias Deneux / Matěj Šust Tybalt – Giovanni Rotolo / Marek Svobodník Lady Montague – Rebecca King / Michaela Wenzelová Capulet – Michal Štípa / Jiří Kodym The tragic tale of ill-fated love between the teenage Juliet and Romeo, framed by the hatred between the feuding Montague and Capulet clans, needs no introduction. Petr Zuska, Artistic Director of the Czech National Ballet, has ventured to conceive the famous work in a novel manner, yet at the same time with due respect to both Shakespeare and Prokofiev. In addition to the lead characters, he accentuates the personage of Friar Laurence, a Renaissance man standing up to the absurdity of social mores and striving to help the love-struck couple. He represents a symbol of human faith in God, in Good and happy endings. Laurence’s antipode is Queen Mab, a mythical ruler of shadows, the “midwife of dreams and phantoms”. By means of Laurence and Mab, the story is permeated by a clash between the male and female principles, between Ying and Yang, between rational planning and unpredictable chance.   When approximately a year ago I began pondering how to approach the Romeo and Juliet theme, I felt that I wanted to create a production that would possess something special, unique, different, something that I hadn’t yet seen. At the same time, I wanted to eschew cheap gimmicks and not “offend” Shakespeare and Prokofiev. I set off from the character of Friar Laurence, who in the vast majority of ballet versions is just a “walk-on” role, without a wider scope being afforded to his character and soul. I identified Laurence as a symbol of human belief in God, Good, Order, in the success of a good plan to the satisfaction of everyone. In the final analysis, Laurence is also the most tragic character, since owing to unforeseeable Chance everything slips beyond his control. His good will thus indirectly leads to the final tragedy. And what’s worst – he himself stays alive. His “opponent” is Mab, Queen of the realm of dreams and shadows, an abstract quantity, as mentioned by Mercutio in one of the play’s longest and most intriguing soliloquies. Mab represents the irrationality of life and being. She is neither good nor bad, but both at the same time, similarly to how we perceive love and death from our viewpoint. Mab personifies unpredictability and uncontrollability, and, although a translucent invisible figure, it is she who pulls the strings. Whereas Laurence epitomises the typical aspects of the male principle, Mab embodies the purely female principle. The conflict between and co-existence of these principles, as two incompatible and concurrently magnetising polarities, is nothing but the old archetypal thesis of existence. In this way, we can symbolically place against each other Sun and Moon, Ying and Yang, and many other seeming opposites. In a broader context, the conflict between Friar Laurence and Queen Mab can also be perceived as a conflict between the Human and God (or, if you prefer, the Universe), whereby, naturally, the Human has no chance. Just as reason is ultimately vanquished by emotion, brain by heart, knowledge by dream and … to be globally topical – prosperity by crisis. It always concerns two sides of the same coin, which, unfortunately, are mostly in imbalance. If we descend from metaphysical heights back down to earth, it is possible, with slight simplification, to substitute the mentioned antipodes with Man and Woman. Two totally different groups of human beings who eternally oscillate on the edge between mutual attraction and the inevitable, perpetual misunderstanding and antagonism. William Shakespeare cannily does not reveal the actual reason for the age-long feud between the Montagues and Capulets. I hope, however, all these centuries later, that the Bard will forgive me the slight specification within my approach to his theme. How the aforementioned permeates with the action of the story itself and how it pervades the inescapable fate of Romeo and Juliet, that I leave upon your experience.  Petr Zuska