WHEN it came to creating a new ballet of Romeo and Juliet for Scottish Ballet, Kryszstof Pastor didn't need to be asked twice.
The resident Polish choreo-grapher at the renowned Dutch National Ballet company knew from his experience helping the Scottish company re-stage his short ballet Light and Shadow that they had what it takes to step up to a new, full-length production
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"They are very flexible, very open," he says after a hard day fine-tuning the work at the company's Glasgow head-quarters. "It is a disciplined company and creative at the same time.
"When I worked with them before and creating on them now, they are able to focus on the work which is quite unique I must say. When they prepare the performance, they really focus on this production. Dutch National Ballet is a bigger company and maybe perform more performances, but I miss this focus."
Added to the attraction of returning to Scotland, Pastor also took to the idea of creating a new version of Romeo and Juliet. As he points out, it is not such a classic that there is a definitive version of it in the ballet repertoire, although Kenneth MacMillan's choreo-graphy comes close, largely because Prokofiev's music was not premiered until the 1940s.
"For me, it is the story which is always fascinating," he says. "But it only made sense to make this ballet if I could do my own, not copy MacMillan. What is important is the character of the dancers, the character of the company, so I could do something new with a slightly different approach."
The approach lead Pastor to ask the Prokofiev estate for permission to make changes to a score he regards as contemporary, with elements of jazz and use of such instruments as the saxophone. To his surprise, as he had heard that previous requests had been turned down, after viewing his synopsis, they agreed. "I didn't do anything too drastic," he explains.
"When it was created, some of the scenes were composed for a large company, just to make the people dance, and it didn't really push the action of the drama forward. I thought it was necessary to make it a bit more compact and approp-riate to contemporary audiences. Then it is not just decoration but it is like a theatre piece – everything serves the drama."
Like Prokofiev's music, which is vivid enough to tell the story on its own, Pastor is intent on serving the drama of the ballet. It is not just as the story of two lovers, it is a story that is against conflict and war with the lovers coming from two warring factions. To this end, he has set the ballet in Italy over three different eras.
"The characters don't age," explains Pastor. "I start out in the 1930s, then the Fifties, and then we go to contemporary times. It is because the story could happen at any time, in the past or in the future.
"In Italy in the Thirties there was a lot of social tension and conflict. In the Fifties the people were expecting it would be a long time of peace, but life proved different. In the play it is also like this. Romeo and Juliet are happy after their wedding, but first Mercutio is killed then Tybalt is killed by Romeo and he has to leave. At this moment the conflict becomes even bigger between the two families."
Such an approach is very much in keeping with Pastor's choreography. He famously goes for a naturalistic approach, getting rid of what he calls 'ballet habits'.
"Romeo and Juliet, unlike some fairytale characters, are real people," he says. "So I don't want that it is too balletic, it has to be quite natural." It is an attitude best explained by his approach to coaching the three leads.
"The three Romeos are very different," he says, "but basically I let them keep their personalities. I want them to be Tama (Barry), Adam (Blyde) or Erik (Cavallari) before being a ballet dancer. They have to imagine what it is like to be the man who has spent the night with his wife, but at the same time killed somebody the night before. What I really don't want to see on the stage is the melo-dramatic approach. I don't want to see all this dramatic gestures like the silent movie style, I want to see real people."
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Romeo and Juliet, Festival Theatre, Nicolson Street, Tuesday-Saturday, 7.30pm (Thursday, Saturday matinee, 2pm), £7.50-£34.50, 0131-529 6000 The full article contains 775 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
