After Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, and Carmen, Mats Ek put together yet another groundbreaking production with his 2013 Stockholm Opera version of Shakespeare’s mythic drama, part of the opera company’s celebrations of its 240th anniversary. The Swedish choreographer interprets Romeo and Juliet as less the story of a rivalry between two warring families (the Montagues and the Capulets) and more that of a forced marriage—a perspective that informs his decision to reverse the protagonists’ names in the title. Ek’s Juliet and Romeo follows its fragile young heroine as love gives her the strength to go against her family and the patriarchy. The musical score Ek chose for Juliet and Romeo holds as many surprises as his unique interpretation: rather than Prokofiev’s score—which the choreographer considers “a magnificent example of its genre” yet too narrative-driven for his purposes—Ek uses selections from Tchaikovsky’s oeuvre adapted and arranged by Anders Högstedt. The final score is performed by the Orchestre Colonne under the direction of Alexander Polianichko.
A program of modern dance that brings together four electrifying performances by the dancers of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater! Get ready to be captivated by Wayne McGregor’s sumptuous Chroma (music by Jack White and Joby Talbot), Ronald K. Brown’s powerful Grace (music by Duke Ellington, Roy Davis Jr., and Fela Kuti), Robert Battle’s humorous Takademe, and finally Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, described by The New York Times as “one of the great works of the human spirit”!
Thierry Malandain pays tribute to Tchaikovsky’s three great ballets: The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. He gives a new life to them in an enchanted world where young girls don’t have any arms and where the Sugar Plum Fairy is a very mysterious man... Dreams are the core of this ballet that brings us back to childhood: the choreographer’s childhood, whose early years were immersed in Tchaikovsky’s music. Tchaikovsky’s three ballets appear like dreams in two colours, sprinkled with mirrors, inhabited by nice insects and interspersed by nightmares in which monstrous creatures (beetles?) take possession of the stage. Because, if you think about it, a young girl who sleeps for a hundred years, humans kept in swans’ bodies and toys that come alive... Tchaikovsky’s three masterpieces are fairy tales in the ballet universe. It is marvelous, it’s magic, it’s magnificent... as a child would say, “It’s magificient!”.