Romeo and Juliet
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Photo: Tiberiu Marta
Neoclassic ballet in two acts
In 1934, the Kirov Ballet of the former Leningrad commissioned a ballet on the theme of Romeo and Juliet, as Shakespeare's works were then often performed in the former Soviet Union. Sergei Prokofiev, who left Russia in 1914 and continued his career as a composer and virtuoso pianist in Western Europe and the United States, saw the story of Romeo and Juliet as a chance to renew relationships with his homeland. Prokofiev wrote a very precise score which follows the sequence of events of the Shakespeare’s original. However, the management of Kirov Ballet was sceptical whether the ballet can be displayed in such psychological nuances, and in 1935, the project was abandoned. Prokofiev then tried to persuade the Bolshoi Ballet Theatre in Moscow to start a new ballet production, but after the management heard the music, played by the composer himself, they have concluded it is too tiring and utterly non-danceable. Eventually, the ballet’s was firstly staged on 30th December 1938 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, after choreography by Ivo Vana Psota. The concept of choreographer Valentina Turcu remains true to Shakespeare's text, and offers a vision of a daring, sensual and brutal era, where the matters of life and death were often resolved in irrational manner and passionately affected atmosphere.
The new ballet staging depicts a portrait of eternal love, which was sacrificed due to hostile environment and inexorability of destructive relationships. Valentina Turcu finds in the music of Prokofiev the ideal companion for the realization of her choreographic vision, in which she significantly reduces the importance of many musical and dramatic deviations, while remaining oriented to the essence of the story. The creation evokes the iconography of Renaissance paintings and architecture, yet it comprises the contemporary actuality of the eternal yearning for love. The life "hunger” for a new experience of love perceives the sensuality, cruelty and passion as the core of dramatic conflict, while being imbued with contemporary choreographic expression. Juliet’s recognition before the inevitable fatal end will be transformed into a scene of the internal journey through the deepest, shady areas of the soul, whereas Juliet compels her being to the Truth and Love, becoming united with the Almighty.
