DANCE REVIEW: Ballet Maribor at Jacob’s Pillow

JACOB'S PILLOW
Ted Shawn Theatre
Ballet Maribor
Radio and Juliet
July 1-5, 2009

Review by Robin Catalano

(BECKET, Mass., June 26, 2009) -- Little of Ballet Maribor’s Radio and Juliet is immediately identifiable as Shakespeare’s iconic love story, but there is still something familiar about it. In this spare, creatively conceived version, Juliet awakens to find the dead Romeo beside her, and the ballet unfolds in flashback.

True, Romanian-born choreographer and Ballet Maribor director Edward Clug retains the masquerade scene (in our age of SARS, these characters don surgical masks), the rumble between the Montagues and Capulets, and the pivotal fight sequence between Tybalt and Mercutio.

This Juliet (Tijuana Krizman, who, amazingly, only began ballet training at age 14), however, flirts not just with Romeo, but with a variety of men, who seem to symbolize masculinity rather than take on actual Shakespeare characters. When she finally dances a pas de deux with Romeo, the two project more expression toward the audience than toward each other. The movement is so stylized -- much of it is jerky and mechanical-looking, and Clug has a penchant for sequenced or even independent, rather than unison, choreography in group dances -- that it’s often difficult to discern any elements of romance.

Of course, there’s Radiohead’s über-abstract, propulsive techno soundtrack. Add to this the larger-than-life, disorienting, black-and-white film interludes that flicker at the back of the stage -- sometimes lingering on a single, stark image, and other times pulling in so quickly for close-ups that the brain can’t keep up -- and you have a Romeo and Juliet for the Twitter generation, a modern retelling that says as much about our plugged-in, socially disconnected culture as it does about that moment in young love when everything hangs in the balance.

Sometimes, as in the six male dancers’ alternately athletic and elegant group fight scene, all of this comes together perfectly. Other times, such as in Juliet’s anticlimactic solo, not so much. Witty bits -- post-party, as the lights come up and then fade out, the two leads move closer and closer together, only to pass each other entirely; Juliet’s poison of choice is a lemon -- give some much-needed levity to what is otherwise a dark and moody (though gorgeously lit) production. And Clug himself, in the Mercutio role, is a standout, particularly in his fight-to-the-death scene with Tybalt (Sergiu Moga).

Radio and Juliet is beautifully weird, but is perhaps hindered by its Shakespeare trappings. Still, it’s another intriguing entry in the Clug canon, and should gain him many new fans.

Robin Catalano is BerkshireLive's dance critic and a contributing editor to Berkshire Living.