Dance
Royal Ballet (Covent Garden)
Match-
Sophie Constanti
Matchmaking is the ballet world's favourite in-house sport. And no other bal- let encourages our premature blessing of a trial partnership in quite the same way as Romeo and Juliet. Kenneth MacMillan's production of Romeo and Juliet — his first full-length work — was created in 1965 on Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable. But it is commonly regarded as Fonteyn and Nureyev's ballet, for in addition to their being first cast, it was they who took the title roles in the 1966 film version.
Last week, Covent Garden offered us two new Romeos. The first, Irek Mukh- amedov, is the strapping ex-Bolshoi dancer who joined the Royal in 1990 and has suc- ceeded, admirably, in discarding his Sparta- cus image; the second, Adam Cooper, is a young, still relatively inexperienced soloist increasingly entrusted with principal roles. Mukhamedov's Juliet was Viviana Duran- te. Cooper, replacing an injured Stuart Cassidy, partnered Fiona Chadwick. The Mukhamedov-Durante pairing (conceived some time ago) has attracted huge interest and much support. One suspects that this is because the Royal Ballet and its public are quite happily colluding in yet another round of essential matchmaking. And why not? Almost every balletomane who was around during the Sixties and Seventies talks starry-eyed about the art form in terms of dancers, personalities and the on- stage chemistry generated by them. In those days, there wasn't the obsessive mon- itoring of body shape and technical ability — a attitude which, perhaps, helped to cement the opinion that the Royal had lit- tle to offer during the late Eighties. As a Romeo and Juliet couple, Mukhamedov and Durante are tempera- mentally suited to one another. This, more often than not, enabled them to transcend the awkwardness posed by their physical incompatibility. Next to Mukhamedov, Durante can look insubstantial rather than petite, too much the gossamer ballerina. But her firm grasp of The role, her clear understanding of MacMillan's Juliet as the character who leads the action, determines events and takes responsibility for her own destiny, saves Durante from looking like a sylph caught in Mukhamedov's (uninten- tional) iron grip. Although Mukhamedov's Romeo was as boyish, charming and even- tually passionate as the best of them, his dancing occasionally took on a curiously light yet plodding quality. Maybe this was his way of balancing the passages of fast, intricate footwork and multiple turns which pepper MacMillan's ballet.
Cooper's Romeo was charmingly shaped by the dancer's boyish looks and impetuosi- ty. He made every glance, touch and step revealing, bring an extraordinarily raw edge and urgency to Romeo's sighting of Juliet in the ballroom and to the lovers' protract- ed farewell in the bedroom scene. Even more searing was that instance near the beginning of the balcony scene where Romeo and Juliet just stand, transfixed, staring at each other. One of the most memorable, dramatic stillnesses in the bal- let, it is the moment when the couple (and the audience) realise that there's no turn- ing back. In Durante and Mukhamedov's performance, the overwrought ecstasy of the subsequent pas de deux somehow weakened the impact of that moment, whereas Chadwick and Cooper — a no less romantic match — somehow prolonged its throbbing intensity.
But Chadwick's Juliet was, at times, too adult. In the scenes where she rejects Paris, she appeared artful and calculating rather than bewildered and upset. While Durance's interpretation had correct pro- portions of both wild exhilaration and unshakable stoicism, Chadwick's reading was tinged with a kind of stagy artifice. Watching Durante, you saw Juliet; in Chadwick's case, you kept noticing the dancer's own mannerisms, the occasional awkward carriage of neck and head, the peculiarly ingenuous stance, the efficient, automatic responses layering a glassy-eyed acting style. It was only in the love duets that she shone, Cooper partnering her with tenderness, care and authority. He may not yet be altogether secure in such principal roles, but he is getting there fast. And while `Never trust anybody over an hour and a half' he doesn't have the best feet in the busi- ness, he is one of the few men at the Royal who are real upper-body dancers. Head, neck, chest, arms, back and waist. In the glory years of British ballet, that was what dancing was all about.
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