I went to see ABT perform Romeo & Juliet last night. Several of my ballet friends were there because Roberto Bolle performed the male lead. This is huge because Bolle is now a principal with ABT but has otherwise not been seen in the US. In Italy, he is a huge star, above and beyond what most ballet dancers ever become. He is the epitome of the perfect male dancer-handsome, tall, broad shoulders and long legs, beautiful feet. He's a pretty good dancer too, aside from all those physical attributes!
In this performance, he was paired with Irina Dvorvenko and they made a wonderful Romeo and Juliet. Although I just adore the music (by Prokofiev) this has never been one of my favourite ballets. The McMillan version has 2 of the most beautiful dances in ballet-the balcony scene and the bedroom scene-but surrounding this is usually a lot of silly swashbuckling and walking around the stage. Something seems to have changed with ABT because the entire ballet seemed to be much more focused on character, story, personality than ever. I actually thoroughly enjoyed this production all the way through. I saw a level of character development in Tybalt and Mercutio (the two characters whose deaths trigger the tragedy) that just added so much to the narration. This was one of those evenings that just made me happy to have been witness to such beauty and artistry.
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