Some of you may have read my recent reviews of the Lyon Opera Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet's "Romeo and Juliet" in the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Here are links to them:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/classical/192346_pnb25q.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/classical/192155_lyon24q.html?searchpagefrom=1&searchdi ff=2

I would love any commentary you might have on these two performances.

Here is an earlier blog entry on an earlier PNB performance:
http://www.artdish.com/blog/2004_04_01_archive.asp

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Jim Demetre

This production was designed to be pared down to the relationship of the lovers - hence no overwhelming Prokovief score, no crowds of 50 dancers milling around and no "look at me - I'm the star of the show" leads. The balcony and bedroom pas de duex are among the finest in story-ballet canon - not sure where Mr. Demetre was looking, but about the only time they stopped dancing was to kiss - a hard thing to do on the run and never as effective.

It is an intimate rendering of Romeo and Juliet, yes - in numbers and concept. If you want 75+ dancers doing endless variations and chewing up the scenery, hang tight for the Bolshoi. And don't ever expect a favorable review of a Stowell ballet from this source -Mr. Demetre is deaf, dumb and blind to the evidence.

Kent and Francia should be commended for creating one of the country's great ballet companies (and ballet schools) here in Seattle. To me, this is one of the most significant achievements in Seattle's cultural history.

Although I am not a fan of R & J, I have been a subscriber to the PNB for over ten years and have spent many evenings enjoying his work.

I am very much looking forward to "Silver Lining." If I am asked to write about this for the P-I, you will understand that - however "deaf, dumb and blind" I may be - I do not dismiss Kent Stowell's work out of hand.

On a low brow note, it was just plain boring. The music not Tchaikovsky's best, the choreography more voguing than dancing --nobody wants two hours of that, and R & J the least passionate couple since Pat and Dick Nixon. Given that the youthful passion of R & J is the lifeblood of the story that's a big miss. As pretty as the sets and costumes were, there was nothing of the spice of life in the piece save for the duel between Mercutio and Thybalt and thank god for those two, they packed more zing into the piece than twenty Romeos could have. Even the feud between the two families seemed more like a misunderstanding between diplomats from Switzerland and, say, Costa Rica, not the stuff of great art.

So what we have is a work that only operates on the middlebrow level, people who know they should know about the play and the ballet and the music have satisfied themselves with the knowledge that they have in fact seen some representation of this story, but nothing more. Should we be settling for that? Hell no.

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I was not expecting to enjoy the Bolshoi's old Soviet "Romeo & Juliet" with its choreography by Grigorovich. When it was over, however, I found myself trembling. This did not happen when I saw Kent Stowell's version last Thursday.

It is important for me to note that Stowell has produced full-length narrative ballets that have great emotional intensity. Both "Swan Lake" and the "Nutcracker" succeed at this because the themes of sexuality and the dawning of adulthood (both present in "R&J") are treated in the context of mythology rather than social parable. Stowell is more of a German Romantic than Shakespearean Tragedian. And German Romanticism is better-suited to ballet anyhow.

I also wanted to address my comments regarding the Lyon Opera Ballet's production of "Jardi Tancat."

I suggest that the Balanchine-honed "precision" of the PNB dancers may have diminished the soulfulness of this work, but I have seen it greatly enhance other pieces such as Paul Taylor's "Company B." The Paul Taylor Company's version simply does not compare. The PNB gives it a satiric edge Tayor may have desired but his company could never achieve.

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Jim Demetre