The Ballet of Catalonia has been resurrected in its land. Between cheers, bravery and some tears of emotion, the public at the Teatre Principal of Terrassa, the city where this private company resides, celebrated this weekend – with the mayor and other authorities – the overwhelming version of Shakespeare's classic Romeo and Juliet which the artistic director of the troupe, Elías García, has created with Prokófiev's intense score.
The Catalan choreographer, who together with Leo Sorribes brought the IBStage international summer course to Barcelona in 2013 and launched the star galas that have taken place at the Liceu in recent years, makes a change and inverts the names of the protagonists to recognize the empowered role of the young Capulet, who as a girl takes the reins of her life..., until the fatal outcome.
The thirty dancers who came on stage were proof of the good shape of the company, which, as soon as the three performances held on consecutive days ended last night, promoted the Finnish Ellen Mäkelä and the Italian Paolo Calò to the soloist category. (main couple) and the Brazilian Ariele Gomes, who was already a soloist in the Ballet del Sodre of Uruguay.
There was nothing less. They surprised by their technical solvency and their dramatic vision both in the dynamic ensemble numbers – with cane dances from the Catalan tradition at the service of the battles between Capulets and Montagues – but especially in the duets of love and death.
With a sober but minimal set design – the production has a budget of 25,000 euros – and elegant and simple costumes that differentiated the party from the mourning party, the proposal placed everything on the dance. Especially the wise combination of classical steps with others of neoclassical flow, the original style of this ballet – commissioned by the Kirov and premiered in 1935 in Leningrad –, which in turn embrace an expressive modernity of contracts and extreme extensions, a la Martha Graham. And there is no shortage of nods to Nizhinski and Diaghilev's Ballets Russos.
The richness of vocabulary does not save, however, this two-hour ballet from falling into a certain repetition, corrected by the suspense of the story and the final confusion between false and true poisons: another moment that Mäkelä and Calò live to the fullest. .
Oblivious to the harsh reality of what it means to run a private ballet company – 460,000 euros in budget and 16 people on the payroll, including team and dancers – the Egarense public celebrated last night with long bravos a show that has managed to excite and that, by polishing the transitions for greater fluidity and working more on the musicality of the performers, it would be at the level of a large opera theater company. In this sense, Roberto Tarantino positively surprised in the role of Mercutio. David García makes a brave Tybalt and Emma Pickard convinces as Nurse. An unprecedented success in the short existence of the company.
