danceview
a quarterly review of dance

Writers' Archive

Alexandra Tomalonis
Reviews

From ABT, A Doomed 'Romeo And Juliet'

By Alexandra Tomalonis
Special to The Washington Post
February 24, 2003

American Ballet Theatre’s Concert Hall version of Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet” -- with minimal sets, and, thus, nothing to cushion the lighting -- has been an interesting experiment, and the imaginative lengths to which both the company and the Kennedy Center have gone to give ballet fans a taste of ABT during the current Opera House renovation is admirable. But there are ballets where the “let’s just watch the dancing!” approach doesn’t work, and this is one of them.

The dancers couldn’t provide a sense of place and time on their own. Without the sets to tell us, now we’re in the market square, now we’re in a ballroom, the ballet might be taking place in a gym in Verona, New Jersey, so casual was the approach and so unaristocratic the carriage of many of the men. There were several debuts in important roles this week, and one felt for the dancers’ attempts to create a drama under such circumstances.

On Wednesday night, with Xiomara Reyes (a debut) and Angel Corella in the title roles, the ballet was more puppy love story than tragedy. Reyes gave a very spontaneous performance and captured Juliet’s half-child, half-woman nature. She wasn’t afraid to be gawky, squirming out of Paris’s arms or flinging herself like a rag doll at Romeo. Although she and Corella are well-matched in size, they seemed to have little rapport, and Corella, always an excellent turner, seemed more engaged in his solos than in their scenes together.

There are nearly a dozen dance acting parts in this ballet, and the present company doesn’t have enough dancers with the maturity and authority to fill them in multiple casts. Wednesday night, there was no sense that this was a tragedy born of blood feud, no menace in Tybalt, no wit to Mercutio. The great performance was by Frederic Franklin (88 and the most intense man on the stage) as Friar Lawrence, who created a world in 6 seconds while making a simple sign of the cross.

Saturday afternoon, Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Belotserkovsky made their debuts as the two lovers. Dvorovenko, with her beautifully arched feet and long lines, was a lyrical Juliet without slighting the drama, and her transformation from a young girl awkward with men to an assured young woman was completely believable. Belotserkovsky doesn’t quite fill out his variations -- steps are swallowed, not completely finished -- but he can fill out a role and was a sympathetic Romeo. Unfortunately, partnering problems prevented their duets from being free and passionate.

In this cast, there was a sense of period and plot courtesy of two dancers: Gennadi Saveliev as a swaggering Tybalt, nearly choking on blood lust, so great is his hatred for Romeo, and Veronika Part as Lady Capulet. In the scenes in Juliet’s bedchamber, where the parents try to convince her to marry Paris, one could follow the drama from watching Part’s back and gently fluttering fingers.