juliet and romeo mats ek essay

Skip to content

The HSC Hub will close on Friday, 31 May 2024 . From this date, all resources on the website will no longer be available. More advice will follow.

Core appreciation - Mats Ek - Juliet and Romeo (2013)

An extensive digital resource package exploring Juliet and Romeo. A HSC dance course prescriptions 2022-2024 resource.

This resource package provides insight into:

• the subject matter
• choreographic style
• various interviews with Mats Ek
• an overview of the work and key scene descriptions
• suggested additional resources
• teaching and learning strategies
• approaches for study
• and classroom ready resources.

The HSC hub was created in 2020 – some resources may contain references to 2020 conditions and dates. Please check NESA HSC key dates and exam timetables and coronavirus advice .

We are working on accessibility for all of our support materials. If you need any assistance, please get in touch with us at [email protected] .

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Royal Swedish Ballet: Mats Ek’s Juliet and Romeo – hauntingly odd

Mats Ek has always taken a radical line with the ballet repertory, and it’s clear from the title that his new Juliet and Romeo comes with maverick intent. But in contrast, say, with his visionary Giselle , Ek’s powers of reinvention feel more compromised here. At some moments he remints the story with imagery of aching intimacy and disconcerting darkness; at others he just tinkers, ineffectually, around the edges. Part of the problem may be his choice of music, a collage of Tchaikovsky extracts that rarely cohere into a credible musical or dramatic world.

Yet if the ballet disappoints overall, the first half exudes a thrilling promise. Ek sets his story in a suspended time zone, somewhere between old Verona and the present day. There are no sword fights or bustling market scenes, just a maze of stark black walls that provide hiding places for marauding gangs, and are policed at night by guards on motorised scooters.

As time is realigned, so are the characters. Some of the women are given stronger roles, especially the Nurse, who is danced by the marvellous Ana Laguna as a figure of ancient matriarchal powers. She sees and judges everything, and is a lioness in defence of Mariko Kida’s Juliet, a similarly potent character who mixes wilfulness with self absorption and wide-eyed curiosity, qualities that colour her duets with Romeo.

Nuzzling, playful and drenched in wonder, the choreography for the two lovers embodies a language of discovery that Ek makes beautifully specific to them.

There’s more richness of detail in the dynamics between Romeo and his friends, the emollient, jokey Benvolio and the dangerously volatile Mercutio.

Yet, excellent as Ek can be in setting up character, his storytelling falls apart in the second act. Tybalt is too sketchy and muted a presence, and the killing of Mercutio is oddly incidental. The decision to ignore the sleeping potion twist speeds up the plot but denies Juliet her pivotal moment of choice, and diminishes the horror of the lovers’ deaths.

Only at the end does Ek rise to tragedy. The final image, in which all of Verona lies down in mourning for Romeo and Juliet, raising their legs in imitation of the lovers final pose, may be one of the oddest images you will see on stage. But it is vintage Ek in its power to haunt, to unsettle and to move.

• Pyotr Tchaikovsky
• Classical music

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

Full of Dance

Dance as form+content.

Juliet and Romeo by Mats Ek

Juliet and Romeo – Ballet in 2 Acts

choreography by Mats Ek on music by Tchaikovsky performed by Royal Swedish Ballet and Royal Swedish Orchestra staging design by Magdalena Agberg recorded in 2014 at the Royal Opera House in London Juliet: Mariko Kida Romeo: Anthony Lomuljo Mercutio: Jérôme Marchand Nurse: Ana Laguna —————————————— https://www.selectatv.com/website/129-julia-romeu-um-bal-de-mats-ek-piotr-ilych-tchaikovsky-alexander-polianichko-1

I just watched Mats Ek’s Juliet and Romeo. Genius, genius, genius. It took me some time to get what he was doing, but when I got it, I was awed by his accomplishment.

Movements in his choreography are sometimes very easy to recognize, at first you think it’s mime, they look like everyday gestures we use – but with them come others, that look odd, out of place, quirky. The kind of movement changes fast, alternates to completely different ideas, or moods or feelings. In the beginning I was confused. In fact I was so lost I gave up trying to understand, and just watched the dancers. It was real pleasure to look at them, they are excellent, these wonderful Swedish! Weird as some movements were, they performed them such with amazing clarity and easiness, their competence turning even the strangest one into beauty.

Of course I had seen many ballet versions of R&J, several movies and read the bard’s play itself, but at this point I had stopped analyzing and comparing. I had emptied my mind, dropped all pre-existing notions, and was just enjoying the dancers’ work. And then… it started to work: I realized I “knew”, I could clearly understand what the characters were feeling!

Mats Ek wasn’t telling a story. Or better said, he was, but not through facts, not in the objective, external world. He did it through the feelings of the characters. And not through our socially deeply codified body-language, like when you wave your hand meaning “good bye”, but by using a far more instinctive one, that makes you press a hand to your stomach when you receive a brutal emotional blow.

But there is more. His “text” is not prose, it is poetry, and again not a sonnet, but the most radical free verse poetry. You cannot apprehend it by reading one word, and then the next, and the next, carefully chaining one to the other, following step by step the a nexus inscribed in them by the poet. It’s the kind of poetry that you (must) read without searching for sense, you must read bypassing your analytical mind and just let the words – juxtaposed together without apparent sense – sink in. What the poet wants to impart is not reachable using logical reasoning, but taking in the rhythm, the sound, what each word fleetingly evokes – and somehow, as you read, the underlying sense starts to be unveiled, you will be told something without the need to “think” about. What will come out is not a story, or a precise idea, but something wider and less precise, and usually deeper: a notion, a mood, a feeling.

Mats Ek choreographic text is like that. Even recognizable gestures are not the gestures themselves, as are not the few objects on stage: they represent related feelings. His talent for finding new expressive gestures is uncanny, as if he is creating new words for things left unsaid before for lack of a noun, but quite real. Or in a sequence of gestures, we need their ensemble to understand. Attempt to “understand” each movement is pointless, we must just let impressions flow, absorb them without thinking – and suddenly we “know” what he wanted to impart!

A plot told through feelings!

Forget about balconies and beds, flasks of poison and swords, genius dialogs or rituals. What we see is another level of reality, that happens inside people and will LEAD them to objective action – but this action is not shown on stage. Objects and factual social interaction are in another sphere of reality. We are given the psychological and affective dynamic of the characters, how they act and react emotionally, their motivations, their internal life.

And-nothing-else.

Can a story be told that way? Oh, yes, Mats Ek proves it can, and quite clearly!

But why odd movements, why surprising and contradictory messages? Because this is how we feel. Our emotions are not nicely behaved, some feelings are unexpected, some are contradictory, even embarrassing. We often have feelings we can’t even put a name on. We feel many things at the same time, what we feel is not linear, has many facets, doesn’t fit rational logic, we are, all the time, a cauldron where many ingredients boil in an emotional soup. Sounds too complex? It is, if you try to track down and rationally explain each element, but whatever is there, sums up to a defined taste, an internal sense, even if ingredients are not all identifiable, even if it looks bizarre from the outside.

Believe me or not, Mats Ek conveys all this in his choreography. It’s true there were moments where he lost me, but they were few, really very few. It is a radically subjective work, and needs to be apprehended through our subjectivity too, or will seem absurd. But once you see the play for what it is… yes! yes, yes, YES!

There is a problem, however: it is hard to describe. And THIS! This is one of dance’s specific values, a fundamental value, and one that Ek took to new heights: Dance can show what words cannot, dance tells of things our rational discourse, with all its beautiful words and complex concepts, can’t handle, and our social selves must ignore (or our lives would turn into chaotic Babel Towers). In dance the message reaches us directly, doesn’t need reason, doesn’t need most of our conventions and codes, including language. I don’t dare try describing what the characters felt, what I saw in them, but of course, it couldn’t be different – there is a gap between dance and text – these two fundamentally different ways of expression.

Professional critics have a big problem. They must write wisely and with intelligence about art (or what should be art). They prepare themselves for that, I imagine. As soon as the curtain opens, they switch on their analytical minds, searching for things they can describe and state with competence – objectivity turned on at full power. The “magic” of art, however, is hard to describe in words, and hard to understand if you were not there – maybe the reason why so few reviewers even try (and maybe the reason they are surprised that public reacted in quite a different way).  For a long time now I have been criticizing critics and their excessively analytic predisposition. They frequently see the elements and don’t see the whole. They frequently see some elements and others not. They frequently just look for flaws, so much easier to identify. They frequently see what they expected to see, and are blind to anything else. And when they are at a loss, they use labels applied by others before them, to just get it over! Now, in a work like THIS, what can we expect of this kind of reviewer? Of course few of them were willing to switch off reason, and subjectively (and passively!) wait for Ek’s sense to come to them.

So you will have them judging what they see at eye’s value. Juliet moves awkwardly because adolescents move awkwardly – good job, Ek! “It’s in the person of Juliet that we see Ek’s choreography at its most subtle and tender. He doesn’t spare us the awkwardness and grotesqueries of adolescence. She pulls daft faces and throws weird shapes; at times she’s all twitching, puppyish impatience.”

Another one: “The decision to ignore the sleeping potion twist speeds up the plot but denies Juliet her pivotal moment of choice, and diminishes the horror of the lovers’ deaths.”

IMHO, Juliet’s choice is a crystal clear and powerful moment, in fact one of the best, but the writer didn’t notice…

This one is worse: “It’s also, in my view, disappointingly dull. While much that I heard beforehand about the winner of the 2015 Olivier Award sounded enticing, the choreography comes across as puzzlingly clunky, as if awkward gestures were haphazardly strung together. I didn’t sense any flow to the dancing, and the storyline is difficult to follow. I waited in vain for a friar and a vial of poison. I failed to connect emotionally to the dancing, but I do not fault the dancers for my lack of feeling. For that, I blame the choreography alone. The dancers looked lovely and appeared well-trained, it’s what they were doing that bored me. For example, there’s a lot of rolling on the floor, arms held close the body, like so many logs, as well as running in place, legs kicking up to one’s rear. Overall, the movement is unexciting, basic, and sometimes crude (more than once someone raises a middle finger or grabs a crotch). If you’re looking for pretty and/or intricate movement on pointe, you won’t find it here.”

No, you won’t find it here. Definitely not. Not because Mats Ek failed, but because he succeeded.

No wonder Ek became eventually so dismayed he decided to retire and forbade his ballets to be performed, end point!

He should instead (please, Mats Ek!) explain what he’s doing, help people understand, prepare them for his play(s) – after all, it’s a deeply unconventional approach. I perceived what he intended by sheer luck, because I had put aside pre-existing notions, was watching with “innocence”. I’m not bragging, quite the opposite, I’m no art expert, ballet expert or in any other way better prepared to evaluate a performance. It only enhances Mats Ek feat, does it not?

I’m grateful and relieved: he recently changed his mind, and is working again! Yeaahhh!

Share this:

Leave a comment cancel reply.

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

A modern interpretation frees dancers: US première of Mats Ek's Juliet and Romeo

What’s in a name? A lot apparently. Celebrated Swedish choreographer, Mats Ek , brings his Juliet and Romeo to the USA with the Royal Swedish Ballet, declaring about his re-ordering of the title, that it’s ‘time to turn the tables’. But, as he points out, one of Shakespeare’s early drafts had it that way too, so maybe he is just reverting to the original. This mixture of the radical and the traditional is evident throughout. Choosing as his musical canvas a potpourri of Tchaikovsky’s works (what more conservative?), he reformulates the classical idiom into something freer, looser and more immediately relational. Something fresher, and more demotic too – a whiff of the street. He is well known for taking the language of choreography down a peg or two, talking of rolling, running or splashfoot rather than adhering to French terms. His characteristic lower-leg kick he describes  ‘kicking oneself loose from the stable’ (not, note a pas de cheval ), and in a sense that is what he is always up to.

One of the signature features of Ek’s work is that the dancers run. Not a pretty, courtly little ‘couru’ but something with greater flow, viscosity even. And they ran here – they ran in groups, Montagues and Capulets, aligning and realigning the bleak walls of the set, humans pushing into motion the ugly corrugated symbol of their tribal divisions. With an exquisite freshness, even naivety,  Juliet (the gamine Mariko Kida) and Romeo (Anthony Lomuljo) run towards each other in a wide circle to give each other not the usual perfunctory balletic embrace, but a hug. Later, she tries to hold her running lover back, seeking to retain the person, the moment, the nearness of love. There’s something of the deliberately unslick about the pair, their movements adolescent, in their discovery of their own and another’s body. The very youth of the romance is evocatively captured, like when they touchingly mirror each other’s demi-pointe.

There are moments too of great relational comedy. The Nurse, Ana Laguna’s pas de quatre with Mercutio, Benvolio and Romeo is just such a treasure, as full of robust slapstick and boisterous hi-jinks here as it is in the play. With grey hair drawn in a simple pony-tail, Laguna was a refreshing antidote to the usual cult of youth in ballet, where the older dancers most often get to play staid, regal parts – just stand around and look dignified. As Ek’s wife, she has lived longer than anyone with his style, and how good to see her as the good-hearted earthy, even bawdy, surrogate-mother. Her pas de deux with Juliet was a lovely representation of women at very different life stages; Juliet’s sheltering under her skirts at the end was a poignant touch.

Jérôme Marchand as Mercutio was a wonder to behold; when he was on the stage it was hard to look at anyone else – luckily for Romeo, he was killed off early in Act II. A long-limbed dancer, with a shaved head, it was easy to imagine him as a ‘street’ character. For Ek had re-imagined those eternally fractious Renaissance clans as today’s urban gangs. Quite properly so: there surely isn’t as much to divide a doublet-and-hose from jeans, hoodies and metallic suits as we might think. Ek has described his style as ‘torso-focused’, in the sense of expression coming from the mid-core of the body and Mercutio’s physicality seemed ideally suited to this.

The portrayal of grief and anguish was particularly well conveyed. Think Picasso’s biomorphic Acrobat in the evocations of shapes. Juliet’s mother, Nadja Sellrup, had a convulsively powerful solo in mourning Tybalt’s death. Joined by other bare-footed women, this turned into a dance of vengeance.  Since the Italian vendettas were historically male, it was particularly apt, given the title, that we should see how Juliet was strong enough to go against the female vendetta.

There was no marriage – no Friar Lawrence  – none of that melodramatic and implausible stuff about sleeping potions : the very simplifications smacked of contemporary Sweden. Still, there could have been some annunciation of these omissions in the program, especially given the unexpectedly short Act II. Juliet drops dead from grief at her father’s anger, his finger pointing her to her death, and there Romeo finds her. Whether the ultimate tragic irony of the play is or is not fulfilled is ambivalent, for the apparently-dead Juliet does indeed wake briefly and dance, although maybe, as far as Romeo is concerned, just as a figment of his imagination. And he dies from no apparent reason other than grief. Nonetheless, the essentials are all there: love, death and redemption (although the stage of raised legs might have looked more like rigor mortis than sapling trees, to those somewhat macabrely-minded). 

Thank you for subscribing!

If you want a different set of newsletters, choose them here and press Update

Mats Ek: Juliet & Romeo

Hamburg ballet, subscribe now to watch.

This is Shakespeare’s classic as you’ve never seen it before. Choreographer Mats Ek has taken on the story of Romeo and Juliet and turned it into something new, insightful and unexpected. Instead of the traditional Prokofiev score, Mats Ek opted for passages from Thchaikovsky’s music, creating a custom score. The music emphasizes the story revealing a tale that goes deeper than just romance. The mobile set (by Magdalena Åberg) creates a mysterious Verona. Royal Swedish Ballet dancers Mariko Kida (Juliet) and Anthony Lomuljo (Romeo) perform beautiful and tender choreography which stands out from supporting characters like the mocking and reckless Mercutio (Jérôme Marchand) and the almost psychotic Tybalt (Dawid Kupinski). This is not Romeo and Juliet, this is Mats Ek’s Julia and Romeo.

Cast & Crew

Thomas Grimm (Director) , Mats Ek (Choreographer) , Piotr Illytch Tchaikovsky (Composer) , Anders Högstedt (Composer) , Alexander Polianichko (Conductor) , Mariko Kida (Juliet) , Anthony Lomulgo (Romeo)

You may also like

Choreographer Mourad Merzouki and the Debussy string quartet once again explore the mixing of genres

Boxe Boxe Brasil

Compagnie Käfig

In re:member, choreographer Andile Ndlovu explores the idea of reclaiming joy, and putting back together that which is broken,

Revisor reunites choreographer Crystal Pite and playwright Jonathon Young for a theater/dance hybrid production.

BiT takes us into the depths of our humanity and questions our individual responsibilities in the turmoil of each passing day.

Compagnie Maguy Marin

A captivating story told through BSL, voice and movement, Unspoken Spoken is performed by a cast of disabled and non-disabled dancers.

Unspoken Spoken (Audio Described)

Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young's Olivier winning BETROFFENHEIT is a bold hybrid of theater and dance that explores trauma, grief and addiction.

Betroffenheit

Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns holds a mirror up to a world enthralled by violence.

An intensely moving portrayal of love, friendship, loss and survival.

Young Men Live At Sadler's Wells

BalletBoyz perform Liam Scarlett’s Serpent and Russell Maliphant’s Fallen.

Ballet Boyz Live at the Roundhouse

Them/Us is an inventive double bill asking where we see ourselves in relation to the “other,” and explores the fine balance between them and us.

John Neumeier developed the idea of creating a ballet observing and structured according to social distancing.

Ghost Light

A group of Young Men brought together by the indiscriminate brutality of war.

Unspoken Spoken

Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre explores the experience of living with Dementia through dance.

Second Seed is a collision with this American artifact, confronting Grffith's delusion and the enduring cult of White victimhood.

Second Seed

Dance, Shorts

Adapted by Ohad Naharin from the anti-play Offending the Audience by the Nobel-winning Austrian playwright Peter Handke.

Naharin's Virus

Batsheva Dance Company

Juliet & Romeo

(2013) 108 min. DVD: $24.99, Blu-ray: $39.99. C Major (dist. by Naxos of America). Volume 29, Issue 4

by Frank Swietek

July 11, 2014

Rating: 3 of 5

The title of Mats Ek's commission for the Royal Swedish Ballet clearly indicates his desire to be different, so it's no surprise that his 2013 version of Shakespeare's classic romantic tragedy elects not to use Prokofiev's score, instead cobbling together bits and pieces from Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, First Piano Concerto, Capriccio Italien , Variations on a Rococo Theme, and other works. And a stripped-down rethought tale it is: gone are the swordfights, Friar Lawrence, Juliet's sleeping potion, and Romeo's suicide. The setting isn't Renaissance Verona, although some of the costumes feel vaguely period—in marked contrast here to the prevailing jeans and hoodies, as well as Segways that characters ride around on. The ambience is more reminiscent of West Side Story , with the Duke striding about ominously through a spare set, terrorizing a glum populace with his street soldiers—apparently including Romeo and his comrades—who are considered beneath wealthy families like Juliet's. The dance moves also clash, veering abruptly from angular thrusts to graceful leaps. The performance itself is excellent, with Mariko Kida a delicate Juliet, Anthony Lomuljo an eager Romeo, and the remainder of the soloists also strong. Nor can one fault the company dancers or the playing of the Royal Swedish Orchestra under Alexander Polianichko. Although unlikely to displace more faithful adaptations of the famous tale of doomed young love, this is an intriguing new take. Presented in DTS 5.1 (DTS-HD 5.1 on the Blu-ray version), this is recommended. ( F. Swietek )

Star Ratings

As of March 2022, Video Librarian has changed from a four-star rating system to a five-star one. This change allows our reviewers to have a wider range of critical viewpoints, as well as to synchronize with Google’s rating structure. This change affects all reviews from March 2022 onwards. All reviews from before this period will still retain their original rating. Future film submissions will be considered our new 1-5 star criteria.

Order From Your Favorite Distributor Today:

DC Theatre Scene

Historical Archive of Washington area theatre

Mats Ek’s Juliet and Romeo at The Kennedy Center (review)

June 3, 2016 by Robert Bettman

The audience in the Opera House at the Kennedy Center last night was buzzing for the North American Premiere of Juliet and Romeo by the choreographer Mats Ek, performed by the Swedish National Ballet. The large European ballet companies are better-funded and simply better than many U.S. companies and while Ek is lesser-known (even among those who love Bejart and Kylian) he’s a brilliant dance-maker.

Ek is the son of choreographer Birgit Cullberg and married to the dancer Ana Laguna (performing in these shows.)  Dance is his whole life, and at 71 years old his sensibility remains entirely modern.

Ek is known for inclusiveness rather than inventiveness in his movement choices and if you’re a lover of dance you may recognize bits of Pina Bausch, Martha Graham, and Matthew Bourne, along with the modern balletic vocabulary. Ek is multi-lingual and in this production creates functional diverse vocabularies for his characters and their relationships.

Almost all of the relationships, including between Romeo and Mercutio, are sexualized and that feels like a bit of an easy way out. What makes humanity, culture, and Shakespeare compelling is more psychologically complex. But it is interesting to see sex as a motivator for the character’s interactions within the traditional storyline, and along with the sex there’s effective physical humor – at one point the queen rolls though riding a Segway.

The Tchaikovsky score, played beautifully by the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra under Phillipe Auguin doesn’t disappoint.

Ek recently decided that he will retire and withdraw his ballets . It’s hard to know what that means, really, but when asked at an interview earlier in the week what he wanted to express next his answer was simple: nothing. Enjoy Ek’s exceptional voice and this incredible company while they’re still around.

About Robert Bettman

Robert Bettmann is an arts writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. He's founder of the arts magazine Bourgeon and the non profit Day Eight. In the last year he's completed projects with funding from the DC Arts commission and DC Humanities Council and was recently awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to expand arts journalism in DC. Robert is an artist himself, having transitioned into writing after a decade-long career as a performing artist. He trained on scholarship at the Washington Ballet and Alvin Ailey schools and performed modern dance and ballet nationally and internationally. His first book, Somatic Ecology, was published in 2009, and he is the editor of an arts anthology, Bourgeon: Fifty Artists Write About Their Work, published recently. (Bio photo: Joanne Miller)

• Links to Resources

More Resources

• Privacy Policy

Daily Posts Archive

Reprint Policy: Our articles may not be reprinted in full but only as excerpts and those portions may only be used if a credit and link is provided to our website.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

REVIEW: Mats Ek's 'Juliet & Romeo' by Royal Swedish Ballet

New Yorker. Londoner. Writer. Lover of dance, travel and food.

What's in a name? In the case of Mats Ek's Juliet & Romeo , which Royal Swedish Ballet presented last week at Sadler's Wells, the switched-up name is just the first of many nuances that make a poignant case for this new version of an old classic.

For starters, Ek dispenses with the familiar Prokofiev score in favor of Tchaikovsky's, which he abridges and reconfigures. The editing is choppy at times, but overall the more lyrical quality of Tchaikovsky's score provides an effective counterpoint to the production's jagged edges.

In a program note, Ek explains that his ballet was inspired by events that triggered the Arab Spring, but it isn't set in a particular time or place. Costumes pay vague tribute to the story's Renaissance origins, but also include jeans, hoodies and sparkly muscle shirts. With shady lighting and shifting walls of corrugated metal, the set invokes a fearful and brutal atmosphere that could belong to any era.

Combining classical, contemporary and pedestrian movement, the choreography is either gorgeously fluid or uncomfortably awkward, but always by careful design. Ensemble pieces are aggressive, yet precise -- the individual dancers acting as cogs in a violent political machine.

Meanwhile, individual characters are drawn in painstaking, quirky detail. The Prince (Jan-Erik Wikström) is an ineffectual figurehead, rolling like tumbleweed through a desert between militant drills of grand battement . Lord and Lady Capulet (Andrey Leonovitch and Gina Tse) are unflinchingly cold and controlling, with temperamental Tybalt (Vahe Martirosyan) following closely in their footsteps. Jens Rosén's Benvolio is goofy and good-natured, while Luca Vetere portrays volatile Mercutio with all the intensity of a silent-film actor.

There is no Friar Laurence in this version; instead, it is the nurse (Jenny Nilson) who acts as the ballet's moral compass. A far cry from the helpless, comic character from traditional versions, she embodies maternal love and protectiveness -- towards Juliet, above all, but also towards Romeo and his friends in the second act.

As for the title characters, Romeo (Anton Valdbauer) is a romantic dreamer, if a bit of a ninny, and Juliet (Rena Narumi) is still more girl than woman. The chemistry between them is unconvincing, which proves a disappointment in the balcony and bedroom duets. Despite some lovely moments -- soaring, ecstatic lifts punctuating low, instinctive movements -- the choreography ultimately relies too heavily on thrusting pelvises, splayed legs and contrived giddiness to make its point.

But much to my surprise, the weak chemistry between the central characters did little to dampen the story's impact. For in Ek's interpretation, love-at-first-sight and magic potions are romantic fantasies that distract from a much harsher reality.

In his version, Juliet is a child bride who is auctioned off like a horse to a sneering Paris. Her brief romance with Romeo represents not necessarily the love of a lifetime, but a first crush on the passage into adulthood. And when the young lovers meet their tragic fate, it's not the result of a well-intended plot gone wrong (Ek dismisses the idea of a temporary death as ridiculous). Instead, it's a murder in cold blood.

The storytelling isn't perfect. Zealous as Tybalt is, he appears to kill Mercutio by accident. Romeo's slaying of Tybalt is even harder to believe: as he springs back and forth over Tybalt's body, the effect is more Footloose than Fight Club .

Overall, though, Ek's stripped-down, switched-up version of the story strikes a relevant, if uncomfortable chord. Its beauty lies in its stark truthfulness, even if, as Ek is fond of saying, beauty isn't always pretty.

Popular in the Community

From our partner, more in culture & arts.

‘Juliet and Romeo’? Royal Swedish Ballet gives Shakespeare a twist at Segerstrom

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

Swedish choreographer Mats Ek shocked the dance world when he announced in January that he would be retiring his repertoire of works from the world stage. The news means Southern California audiences’ rare chance to see Ek’s choreography in motion will be all that much more special when the Royal Swedish Ballet visits Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa this weekend with the West Coast debut of “Juliet and Romeo.”

That’s not a typo. Ek’s unconventional interpretation of Shakespeare puts Juliet’s story in the forefront.

The tragedy still pivots on the star-crossed lovers’ ill-fated affair, but the contemporary ballet emphasizes Juliet, says Royal Swedish Ballet Artistic Director Johannes Öhman.

“She’s sweet, but she’s also very, very strong,” Öhman says of this Juliet, describing her as a “teenage force” caught between her passion for Romeo and her family’s expectation for her to marry Paris.

Ek believes that his dramatization of Juliet’s conflict with her father, Lord Capulet, over her refusal to marry Paris is more along the lines of what Shakespeare had in mind when he first penned the play.

“If you read the text you will see that he threatens her life,” Ek says. “He says, ‘I wish you were never born. And if you don’t obey, don’t ever show yourself here. I will consider you not my daughter.’ So that is a death sentence already.”

And a reason to rebel. Choreographing “Juliet and Romeo” in the wake of the Arab Spring, Ek also drew parallels between the lovers’ fervor for each other and the fearlessness of Arab youth, such as the self-immolation of 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, whose death in a Tunisian square set waves of political protests into motion across the Middle East and North Africa.

“So I made the connection with this young love of Romeo and Juliet, but also to the price of its own extinction,” says Ek, who chose to use an industrial set design and gangs of dancers patrolling the stage on Segways to delve into the Capulets’ and Montagues’ strife.

Ek made an even more unorthodox choice in music, trading Prokofiev for Tchaikovsky. Prokofiev’s score, the traditional accompaniment for many ballets, was almost too familiar for Ek. It described the “the story step by step, scene by scene,” he says. “To find my own way into it, I needed another music. … It was easier for me to start from scratch.”

“Juliet and Romeo” not only marks the return of the Royal Swedish Ballet to the Orange County performing arts center after 17 years, but also a singular opportunity for Southern California audiences to see Ek’s work, which is often performed in Europe but rarely presented in the U.S., Segerstrom Executive Vice President Judy Morr says. The rarity of the upcoming run has been heightened by Ek’s decision, announced in January, to create no more new works and to withdraw existing ones from the world stage as their licenses with dance companies expire.

“My only regret is that it’s the first time,” Morr says of Ek’s work at Segerstrom.

Ek, 71, says the retirement of his repertoire is not a definitive end to his choreographic career — more of a pause that leaves him open to taking on life as it unfolds.

“It’s not said in my head that I will never come back. If the urge is too strong, I will hopefully have the chance to do things again,” he says.

But for now, he likes the idea of not being tied down to a schedule. It’s similar to the philosophy he applies to dance, likening the art form’s ephemeral quality to “writing in water.”

“You can’t put it into the library and take out the book and read it again, two years later or five or 10 or a hundred years later,” Ek says. “When the curtain’s closed, it’s vanished.”

Yet lingering in the choreographer’s mind is one image from “Juliet and Romeo,” inspired by Dutch Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus.” In the right-hand corner of the painting, Icarus, just fallen from the sky, kicks up his legs out of the sea. Doomed to drown in the ocean’s depths, he frantically fights to survive. Meanwhile, the world goes on spinning, as a peasant plows a field, a fisherman angles for his daily catch and a ship sails on. From the artwork’s illustration of a young life cut short, Ek created the ballet’s final scenes.

“I’m using this image at the end of ‘Juliet and Romeo,’ as a picture of death, yes, but something maybe still can come out of it,” Ek says. “Life goes on. And the Earth still exists. It’s a wonderful irony and something beautiful, hopeful about it.”

------------

“Juliet and Romeo”

Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday

Tickets: $29-$159

Info: (714) 556-2787, www.scfta.org

Follow The Times’ arts team @culturemonster .

More to Read

Hollywood crews in ‘crisis’: ‘Everyone’s just in panic mode’ as jobs decline

May 28, 2024

Richard Dreyfuss’ ‘distressing and offensive’ rant has prompted a Massachusetts theater to apologize

‘Seinfeld’ star Michael Richards is more than the worst thing that ever happened to him

May 26, 2024

The biggest entertainment stories

Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

World & Nation

U.S. vows to return more looted antiquities as Italy welcomes home 600 artifacts

Artists priced out of Los Angeles head to this creative hub in the high desert

Entertainment & Arts

Review: A brilliant chat fest at A Noise Within, courtesy of George Bernard Shaw

May 23, 2024

Travel & Experiences

24 superb things to do around L.A. to kick off the summer of 2024

May 22, 2024

Mats Ek's Juliet & Romeo, music by Tchaikovsky

Mariko Kida (Juliet), Anthony Lomulgo (Romeo), Arsen Mehrabyan (Father)... — Royal Swedish Ballet

Mats Ek — Choreographer

Anders Högstedt — Musical Adaptation

Magdalena Åberg — Set and costume design

Mariko Kida — Juliet

Anthony Lomulgo — Romeo

Arsen Mehrabyan — Father

Marie Lindqvist — Mother

Niklas Ek — Duke

Ana Laguna — Nurse

Jérôme Marchand — Mercutio

Hokuto Kodama — Benvolio

Pascal Jansson — Tybalt

Oscar Salomonsson — Paris

Daria Ivanova — Rosalinda

Jörgen Stövind — Peter

Royal Swedish Ballet

Program notes

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 closer look: featured composers

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

You have reached the limit of free articles.

To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE. Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.

which includes our Cookie Use

• LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper. Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy , which includes our Cookie Use

Mats Ek’s Juliet & Romeo, Royal Swedish Ballet

'juliet and romeo', a modern mats ek ballet of the star-crossed lovers, performs this november at sadler's wells.

By CW Contributor on 24/6/2014

An exciting contemporary take on the heartbreak and passion of the most famous of all lovers comes to Sadler’s Wells  by controversial choreographer Mats Ek:  Juliet and Romeo.

This is Ek’s first full-length piece in 17 years – and UK premiere - and he presents it as an urban tragedy. 

Ek places his young sweethearts in a threateningly modern design by Magdalena Aberg . Via his contemporary-infused style, the pair are more childish in their innocence than classical productions have allowed them to be, and an urban militia-controlled environment looms over the lovers’ nimble young steps. 

Grey, Segway-riding figures dart about the stage, but there’s an injection of Renaissance in the robe-like, colourful costumes. Throw in a wonderfully tattooed and tutu-ed Mercutio and the story avoids time period completely. 

His style can divide opinion, yet Ek’s many aficionados are from every corner and style of the dance spectrum. If the Bolshoi dance to the sky, this choreography lunges low, with flexed feet, spinning and lifting around the torso and filling the middle space with movement. It’s a style that completely refreshes the heartbreak and passion of the star-crossed lovers.

Prokoviev ’s score has become one of ballet’s best known and most recognisable - it is perhaps because of this that Ek has dispensed with it, and made the interesting choice of Tchaikovsky , bypassing his ballet scores for an arrangement from the symphonic works, put together by Anders Höstedt .  

If we mentioned that Ek was set for stardom from birth (he’s the son of famous choreographer Birgit Cullberg and actor Anders Ek), you might come to this work with flawed expectations of overconfidence. In fact, having hopped between theatre and dance in his career, Ek is unusually involved in the psychology of the characters. High passion is unavoidable in Juliet and Romeo , but this work is more focused on Juliet, and the brutal isolation of being young and in love and alone.

More than a modernisation, Ek’s idiosyncratic style is enough to bring a whole new epic out of the classic tragedy.

• Ballet (UK & Europe)

Getting to the heart of the matter: a conversation with Mats Ek

• September 12, 2014

Mats Ek. Photo courtesy Sadler’s Wells

Maggie Foyer

Some people avoid the well-trodden path and carve a unique trajectory. So it is with Mats Ek, who makes his London debut as a dancer at the grand age of 69. Together with his wife, Ana Laguna, he will perform the duet, “Memory”, in the  Elixir Festival at Sadler’s Wells. Dance longevity seems to be a family trait; in 1977 he choreographed “Soweto” in which his mother, Birgit Cullberg then aged 69, played a central role.

Several years back I saw Laguna and Ek perform “Memory” at the Dance Salad Festival in Houston. At the dress rehearsal, youngsters from a local school were the invited audience and I asked their opinion of the programme. Most of their praise centred on the virtuosity and the costumes of the dance works, then one young man said in a rich Texan drawl, “And those two old folks! Man, they were so cool!” I thought it wonderful that a simple duet of human relations in a setting of banal domesticity had reached out across the miles and across the ages. This is the genius of Mats Ek: he cuts the crap and reaches directly to the heart of the matter. “That is the thrill. All communication, if it is worthwhile, is taking risk,” says Ek.

Mats Ek has been a dominant force in Swedish dance for decades. For the greater part of his career he was associated with Cullberg Ballet, first as dancer and later as choreographer and director. While his reputation rests on his revisioned classics, “Giselle”, “Swan Lake” and “Sleeping Beauty”, he has also had great success with one act works such as “A Sort of …” written for NDT in 1997 and “Appartement” for the Paris Opera Ballet in 2000 and recently taken into the repertoire of the Bolshoi Ballet. He has also written many works for the Royal Swedish Ballet who now come to London with “Juliet and Romeo”, his first full length ballet in 17 years.

Currently Ek moves with ease between dance and theatre. His productions, notably of August Strindberg’s plays, have received great acclaim. His current production of “Emigrants” at the Royal Dramatic Theatre is a sold out success. His talents extend to televised dance works: “Smoke” featuring Sylvie Guillem and Niklas Ek, and “Carmen” with Ana Laguna each gained an Emmy Award.

Ballet is so often equated with aesthetic beauty that, for the traditionalists, Ek’s sinewy and potent choreographic language borders on heresy. I asked him about the process that enables him to transpose the narrative into the body.

“I imagine all artistic language is a question of selection and if you chose not to use mimetic material you end up having to find solutions within the body. You can use the hands, of course, but maybe not in the conventional sense. You can use the face, yes, but not giving signals that could, in my case, be better expressed with the body”.

Mats Ek rehearsing the Royal Swedish Ballet in ‘Juliet and Romeo’. Photo © Gert Weigelt

Ek’s “Juliet & Romeo”, set in an unspecified ‘theatre time’ centres on the tragic figure of Juliet and raises the still relevant question of a young women’s right to choose her life partner and follow her heart. Ek has dispensed with the character of Friar Laurence. “In the play, both the Friar and the nurse are confidents and matchmakers, so I simply use the nurse for both parts.”

Ek’s ploy also removed what he called, “a crucial difficulty” – how to embody in dance the message of the potion that simulates death. “You cannot tell that in dance, you can only portray it as a physical excerpt, or tell it through pantomime, which I wanted to avoid. My way to solve it was to use the fury of the father.”

I felt the father was also a victim of social demands. Ek agreed to some extent, “The father is caught in a culture of honour which tragically forces many fathers or brothers to kill their sisters and daughters to protect that so called ‘honour’. But the victim is, of course, Juliet.”

While many recent versions of the ballet end in the tomb with the lovers’ death, Ek continues on to a reconciliation. “Shakespeare meant it that way. One never knows what happens later, but mourning the deaths of the youngsters brings the families more or less together; so their sacrifice is not totally in vain.” In the final picture there is a mutual concession to the appalling events as the ensemble assumes the posture of the dead lovers, raising their bare feet in a visual symbol of empathy.

Another innovation in this production is the music which is like a breath of fresh air. Ek wanted a score that was less prescriptive than Prokofiev’s well loved music and worked with Anders Högstedt to arrange a selection of Tchaikovsky’s music. It is an evocative mix of the well-known and the little known. The light-hearted “Capriccio Italien”, accompanies the Nurse’s foray into the city to find Romeo while he gives the theme from the composer’s ‘Sixth Symphony’, popularised in the ballad “The Story of a Starry Night” to the lovers in the garden. The rarely performed “Tempest” fantasy overture backgrounds the opening in the smoke filled gritty urban scene while the Capulets strut and preen to his ‘Fifth Symphony’.

Mats Ek works primarily with ballet companies and declared, “I am very dependent on what the dancers offer.” He notes the importance of a good classical training but also experience and a talent for, “what we roughly call modern dance. I try to explore both and I don’t think, ‘now it’s modern, now it’s classical.’ It’s more about coordination.” Casting his Juliet he also widened the age range.

Mariko Kida as Julia and Anthony Lomuljo as Romeo in Mats Ek’s ‘Juliet and Romeo’. Photo © Gert Weigelt

“I deliberately used some elderly dancers. There are things to explore in older bodies which are unlike a fresh young dancer; and the point is that they are unlike. While there are great possibilities to be found in young dancers it is difficult to play Shakespeare when you are 16. You need to have some baggage to live up to the possibilities he offers.”

The Elixir Festival, which opens on September 12, celebrates lifelong creativity and Laguna and Ek are prime examples. “I think it is an exciting trend,” he said. “The start for me was Jiří Kylián’s wonderful initiative with NDT3. That was the first time I worked with older bodies.”

I asked Ek about keeping in training in his busy life of choreographing and directing. “Well, I train to match my capacity and in order to manage my work. One can quickly forget how difficult, and how wonderful it is to be able to perform.”

Awards Update

Last Saturday at the Positano Awards in Italy, Ana Laguna and Mats Ek were awarded the most prestigious of the prizes, the Lifetime Achievement Award, for their contribution to dance. For the first time the Positano Prize was partnered with the Benois de la Danse prize, which went to Mariko Kida, who created the role of Juliet in Ek’s “Juliet and Romeo”.

In August 2014, Ek received an honorary professorship from the Swedish Ministry of Culture. The award dates back to the 18th century and is given in recognition of services to the community outside of the academic world.

The Royal Swedish Ballet perform Mats Ek’s “Juliet and Romeo” at Sadler’s Wells from 24-27 September. Click here for details.

Related Posts

Diablo Ballet: Celebrated Masters

• May 7, 2016

Malpaso Dance Company: Moving Backward at the Joyce

• October 12, 2022

Royal Swedish Ballet in Mats Ek’s Juliet and Romeo

• June 5, 2016

Scene in Singapore: October 2015

• October 31, 2015

DESTINATION: DANCE – 2016.APRIL

• May 1, 2016

Royal Swedish Ballet: Kylián/Ek/Naharin

• March 22, 2020

A Rare Treat in Stockholm: Mats Ek’s Swan Lake

• November 23, 2015

From the far north: Dans i Nord in Förvandlingen and The Reed Warbler

• October 1, 2015

Dorrance Dance: So You Think You Know Tap?

Royal swedish ballet: pär isberg’s nutcracker.

• December 22, 2018

An étoile says goodbye: Sylvie Guillem’s Life in Progress

• November 16, 2015

Saying goodbye: Sylvie Guillem at the Birmingham Hippodrome

• September 9, 2015

Writing about dance

Personal musings about dance and other related topics.

• Dance Blogs and Webzines
• List of all posts
• Privacy Policy

Royal Swedish Ballet: Mats Ek’s Juliet & Romeo

Royal Swedish Ballet, Juliet & Romeo, Sadler’s Wells, September 27

Mariko Kida and Anthony Lomuljo in Mats Ek’s Juliet & Romeo (photo: Gert Weigelt)

When you are familiar with a particular interpretation of a classic work it tends to provide an emotional and intellectual framework to which a new one will inevitably be compared. The first Romeo and Juliet I saw was Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s 1965 production for the Royal Ballet and its story line, characters and its Prokofiev score have since become a benchmark. Now, nearly fifty years later, Mats Ek has produced a new version of Shakespeare’s play for the Royal Swedish Ballet, but its break with MacMillan’s treatment is so fresh that it commands attention.

Perhaps most importantly, Ek has chosen to cast aside Prokofiev’s original music in favour of a composite score of Tchaikovsky’s familiar and less familiar works (chosen by Ek and adapted and arranged by Anders Högstedt) that are nonetheless rich enough in fanfare, emotion and minor keys to colour and support the action. The choice of music frees Ek — who can draw from his experience as stage director as well as choreographer — to establish his own vision of Shakespeare’s play.

The backdrop of Verona is dropped, too, in favour of Magdalena Åberg’s set of steely, movable panels that suggest no particular place or time and which, rearranged by the dancers and transformed by Linus Fellbom’s lighting, become the walls, alleys and interior spaces in which the story unfolds. This choreographic manipulation of the stage elements echoes a constant theme of encroaching violence: Åberg‘s elegant, autumnal-coloured costumes engulf the bright yellow dress of Juliet but cannot extinguish it and the trapdoor in the stage through which Romeo first appears becomes the lovers’ grave.

Ek has stripped the cast of principal characters to a minimum. There is only one family, that of Juliet: her mother and father, her cousins Tybalt and Rosaline, her nurse, her nurse’s servant, Peter, and her suitor Paris. By comparison, Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio are seen as stateless outsiders. The only figure of (ineffectual) authority is the Prince whom we first see skating into a headwind to the opening theme of the First Piano Concerto in B Flat minor.

Those who search for the story in the printed program may be flummoxed and perhaps irritated by the lack of a synopsis as not all the characters are immediately identifiable. It is worth remembering that Shakespeare’s play does not begin with an outline of the plot, either. He provided the dramatis personae and the setting but it was left up to the audience to deduce the story from the snippets of chorus and the dialogue between the characters. Ek’s approach is the same: the ‘text’ is his richly poetic choreographic language in which metaphor and simple character traits are juxtaposed with such mastery that he can transport us vividly not only into the lives of his protagonists but also into his overarching themes. If you see Juliet & Romeo in the same way you might listen to Wagner without knowing the story, the emotional clout will remain with you long after you have studied and forgotten the complexities of the narrative.

While the choreography carries the story — in particular the love duet at the end of the first act between Juliet (Mariko Kida) and Romeo (Anthony Lomuljo) that contains all the rapturous enthusiasm and abandon of first love — there are two characters who rise above the story through the fullness of their portrayal. Ana Laguna as Juliet’s nurse has a heart that balances compassion for her ward with an irreverent sense of fun. The weight and authority of her gestures and her freedom of expression make her utterly convincing. The portrayal of Romeo’s friend Mercutio (Jérôme Marchand) as a brash, warm-hearted homosexual attracts both the devotion of Benvolio (Hokuto Kodama) as his chirpy guardian angel and the venom of Tybalt (Dawid Kupinski) whose steely machismo astride his Segway bears an eerie resemblance to Vladimir Putin on horseback. Bare-chested in his black leather pants and tutu, Mercutio is like a jester whose convoluted and bawdy personality is at constant risk in a homophobic society. When Tybalt kills him in a brawl, the ugly sub-story is one of gay bashing. When Juliet dies at the hand of her father (Arsen Mehrabyan), the ugly sub story is that of honour killings. These two deaths are not lost in the mists of history to contrast with a beautiful love story, but are a reminder that such insidious violence can erupt — and does erupt — within our own society.

The impression Juliet & Romeo leaves is that of a morality play of our time, a meditation on the tragic consequences of discriminatory authority. The final scene of the full cast lying on their backs and raising their legs in solidarity with those of the upturned corpses of the two lovers is Ek’s transcendent metaphor for change.

Archived Posts

Subscribe to blog via email.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address

Recent Posts

• Figs in Wigs, Big Finish, Battersea Arts Centre
• Crystal Pite & Jonathon Young/Kidd Pivot in Assembly Hall
• New York City Ballet, Mixed Bill, Sadler’s Wells
• Ian Abbott on Factory International’s Free Your Mind
• Pam Tanowitz, Song of Songs, Barbican Theatre
• NDT1 at Sadler’s Wells
• Alleyne Dance, Far From Home, Dance East
• SERAFINE1369, IV at The Yard
• Duda Paiva, Blind, The Coronet Theatre
• Euripides Laskaridis, Titans, The Coronet Theatre
• Entries feed
• Comments feed
• WordPress.org

© Copyright 2024 | Writing about dance | All Rights Reserved

• Architecture & Design
• Ideas & Opinion
• Visual arts
• Visual Arts
• Architecture & Design
• Ideas & Opinion

Royal Swedish Ballet’s stunning, unconventional ‘Juliet and Romeo’ soon @ Segerstrom

The Royal Swedish Ballet’s “Juliet and Romeo” receives its West Coast debut June 10-12 at Orange County’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts, along with the Kennedy Center one of only two US destinations on the company’s present tour.  The Pacific Symphony, led by Swedish conductor Eva Ollikain, will bring to life to the Tchaikovsky score, rearranged for this production.

At its heart, of course, “Juliet and Romeo” is a love story. A favorite of choreographers and one that is hard to resist, in any interpretation.

Gillian Anne Renault has written about dance for the Los Angeles Daily News, Herald Examiner and artsATL in Atlanta . 

Juliet and Romeo | Royal Swedish Ballet | Segerstrom Center for the Arts | June 10 – 12

Related Posts:

• Ballet Monte-Carlo's good-looking 'Romeo & Juliet,…
• Pina Bausch, Matthew Bourne in dance takeover of Bunker Hill
• Exiled Ukrainian dancers to unite ballet fans in…
• Vancouver's 'Ballet BC,' resident dance company of…

Leave a Reply

   Author (required)

   Email (will not be published)(required)

   Website

subscribe | contact us | advertise | terms of use | privacy | design by i*net systems © 2024 arts•meme — All Rights Reserved.

Our light & fun newsletter arrives in your in-box ONCE every three weeks.

British Universities Film & Video Council

Moving image and sound, knowledge and access.

• About Learning on Screen
• Sign out icon
• Channel 4 Press Packs
• TRILT – Broadcast Listings
• Independent Radio
• TV Times Index
• Moving Image Gateway
• News on Screen
• Archives & Footage
• Shakespeare
• Copyright Guidance

BUFVC Search

• Project Background
• Project team
• Acknowledgements
• Discussion List
• Shakespeare Web Links
• BUFVC articles about Shakespeare

Current Search

No current search.

• New Search (Shakespeare)

My Activity

Preferences

Auto Alerts

Viewed Records

• Mats Ek’s Juliet and Romeo
• All Viewed Records

Mats Ek’s Juliet and Romeo

Additional details, online availability, royal swedish opera stockholm, sveriges television, swedish royal ballet, record stats.

This record has been viewed 1072 times.

Give feedback regarding this record

Send feedback regarding this record to the curator of this collection Your email: [email protected]

• Mark or unmark the record. About marked records »

How to cite this record

Shakespeare, "Mats Ek’s Juliet and Romeo". http://bufvc.ac.uk/shakespeare/index.php/title/av77849 (Accessed 28 May 2024)

• Projects and Research
• Publishing and Distribution
• Training Courses
• Facilities Hire
• Privacy & Cookies Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Please take our survey

• Rent or buy
• Categories Categories
• Getting Started

Mats Ek: Juliet & Romeo

How are ratings calculated? Toggle Expand Toggle Expand

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

Docs that rock this emmys season: from ‘the beach boys’ to ‘the greatest night in pop’.

A documentary about Paul Simon making his new album as well as a doc series about the life and legacy of James Brown are also Emmy contenders.

By Beatrice Verhoeven

Beatrice Verhoeven

Deputy Awards Editor

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

The Beach Boys (Disney+)

This documentary follows the group’s family beginnings as their songs epitomizing the California dream drive their rising fame. It features never-before-seen footage and interviews with resident Beach Boys erratic genius Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, David Marks and Bruce Johnston and includes input from Janelle Monáe, Lindsey Buckingham, Ryan Tedder and Don Was. The Beach Boys was directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny and written by Mark Monroe.

The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix)

Related stories, 'american nightmare' directors on the trial by media suffered by the misnamed "real-life gone girl", 'awards chatter' pod -- sofía vergara on 'griselda,' her brother's cocaine-related murder and a possible 'modern family' reunion, in restless dreams: the music of paul simon (prime video).

In this 31/2-hour documentary series directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney ( Going Clear , Citizen K ), the singer, songwriter, musician and 16-time Grammy winner recounts his upbringing in Queens, the rise of the 1960s hugely successful folk duo Simon & Garfunkel and his solo career, all while making his latest album Seven Psalms , which was released in May 2023. The documentary holds a score of 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

James Brown: Say It Loud (A&E)

This four-part doc takes a look at Brown’s life and legacy with the help of interviews from the likes of Mick Jagger, Questlove, LL Cool J, Al Sharpton and Terry Lewis (minus Jimmy Jam) as well as archival and never-before-seen footage. Say It Loud was directed by Deborah Riley Draper ( The Legacy of Black Wall Street and Olympic Pride, American Prejudice ) and features iconic songs like “I Feel Good” and “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” from the musician known as the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business.

Kings From Queens: The Run DMC Story (Peacock)

Thank you, goodnight: the bon jovi story (hulu).

This four-part docuseries takes an inside look at the “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “You Give Love a Bad Name” rockers and their charismatic frontman, New Jersey’s own Jon Bon Jovi. The project, which began filming in 2022, follows the band as it contemplates its future and legacy. Directed and executive produced by Emmy winner Gotham Chopra ( Kobe Bryant’s Muse ), it features 40 years of personal videos, unreleased demos and never-before-seen photos.

This story first appeared in a May standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe .

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

‘when calls the heart’ actor mamie laverock on life support after balcony fall, watch the hollywood reporter’s full, uncensored comedy actress roundtable, ‘american nightmare’ directors on the trial by media suffered by the misnamed “real-life gone girl”, ‘the jinx — part 2’ revealed a twist in the robert durst saga — what’s next, will.i.am to discuss ai and future of creativity at edinburgh tv festival, ‘eric’ review: benedict cumberbatch plays a desperate dad in netflix’s admirable but unwieldy mystery miniseries.