Sunday, October 4, 2009

Review: Roméo et Juliette

Pacific Northwest Ballet has been a roll lately. Their recent Stranger Genius Award seems deserved. I had high expectations for this production of Jean-Christophe Maillot's Roméo et Juliette. The show was nearly sold out, and I was not disappointed.

There is nothing as singly intense as the pas de deux from After The Rain, but the entire evening was engrossing. It was funny (puppets in the street!), and tragic, and seductive. The stage backdrop was minimalist, featuring effective use of light and shadow. This put the focus where it should be: on the dancers. Particularly, on Carla Körbes and Lucien Postlewaite as the leads and Karel Cruz as Friar Laurence. Körbes's Juliet was more coy than I remembered from Shakespear, but it worked very well. I've gained a new appreciation for ballet fight scenes-- better than a Dr. Seuss fight.

It was beautiful. I'm looking forward to PNB's next production.

1 comment:

  1. How dare you? I'm just reading along absorbing the information, thinking to myself, I may want to go see a ballet soon. Then you had to go and link to 5000 fingers.
    One thing led to another, and now I've got Do-Mi-Do stuck in my head for the foreseeable future. How dare you, sir?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcwAymlCB1k

    ReplyDelete