Romeos and Juliets: Young, Impetuous, ‘for Real’

<First published online in the New York Times, May 2007>

New York City Ballet’s new “Romeo and Juliet” begins with a bit of mood-creating romantic spontaneity for Romeo: two or three arabesque poses alone, then, when his chums Mercutio and Benvolio join him, he waxes more poetic with a few richly dimensional pirouettes. As a solo, it at first looks piffling. But Peter Martins, this production’s choreographer and the company’s ballet master in chief, is giving audiences a choice of four Romeos and four Juliets, and that sketchy opening dance demonstrates how he has encouraged his Romeos to find their own voices.

Robert Fairchild, the first-cast Romeo and a lyrical type, brings a fantasy quality to the pirouettes, as if his mood were tilting him blithely, voluptuously, off-center. Seth Orza, the third-cast Romeo, with a more virile presence, gives a new inflection to the preceding arabesques by looking up at his raised hand (and past it to the sky) with a note of innocent ardor. If you don’t love dance, it must sound daft that an off-kilter quality here, an upward glance there can make you see the touch of the poet that any true Romeo should have. But if you do, you know how such moments can open up meanings, revealing artistry and art itself.

Shakespeare went out of his way to make Romeo and Juliet even younger than they had been in the original Italian source material. Mr. Martins, following suit, has deliberately chosen unseasoned Romeos and Juliets, some of whom are virtual unknowns: he has said he wants his “Romeo” to be “for real” in this sense. And in the real world of career development, these juniors are faring well. News has just arrived that, effective today, Mr. Fairchild and Mr. Orza have been promoted to soloist rank from the corps de ballet, while Sterling Hyltin, Mr. Fairchild’s opening-night Juliet, is among those newly promoted to principal from soloist.

There were steps (in particular, jumps) when Ms. Hyltin made me think, like Romeo, “O, she doth teach the torches to shine bright!” I recall her as the least touching of these Juliets, but this may simply be because of the pressure of carrying a gala opening night: far more experienced dancers have been far more glacial in such conditions.

The Juliet who brought Mr. Martins’s “for real” phrase to mind was Erica Pereira, still a student, both waiflike and coltish: no hint of artifice here. The same applies to her Romeo, Allen Peiffer, who joined City Ballet in 2003 but looks the most boyish of its four Romeos. Both of them real, yes, and gifted. But also embryonic: these are performances I would like to see again some months down the line.

By comparison, Tiler Peck, a strong dancer who tends to smile too fiercely at the audience, starts out too polished as Juliet, even glassy. But she has a feeling for the limelight, and the story, knocking the smile off her face, leads her to apply her intensity anew. Her dance texture has the richest glow of any of these Juliets; she has the most force defying her father; and it is she who brings the most darkness to Juliet’s eventual despair.

Sean Suozzi, like Mr. Orza, a relative oldster, joined the company in 2000. Acting well without particularly pinpointing any specific dance moment, he makes best sense of Romeo’s vindictive killing of Tybalt (he’s helplessly caught up in a cycle of revenge) and makes his suicide compelling: the pell-mell act of a besotted teenager.

But Mr. Orza and his Juliet, Kathryn Morgan, were the lovers who did most to light up the ballet’s dancing. It is hard to know if Ms. Morgan, who joined the corps only in February, has the technical mastery for the Balanchine roles that are the greatest prizes in City Ballet’s repertory. What she does have is an already remarkably eloquent blend of bloom, spontaneity and rapture. She led me into the dance detail in the middle of the balcony pas de deux, like the circuit of flying lifts around the stage during which she, in his arms, blithely hops on point; and in the suddenly frozen dance poses in his arms, as if Juliet were clinging to a moment of magic while the music coursed past.

And, artlessly, she more than others makes the dance imagery sexual. In my review of this production’s opening night, I mentioned the striking lift in which Romeo holds Juliet overhead, her body arched way back (he turns around while keeping her aloft), then lowers her while she maintains this position. Mr. Orza’s partnering made this exceptionally powerful, and Ms. Morgan’s wonderfully yielding upper body made it heart-stopping: a moment of death-in-love, the petit mort that becomes life-changing, a thrilling image of surrender that is in part chilling.

The best passages in this “Romeo” make you hope that Mr. Martins, when reviving the production, will be prepared to rework the rest. Paradoxically, the neatest dance of all — the mandolin dance, delivered by a bunch of five young brothers out of nowhere — is also the cutest and least connected to the story. Even its music, tiresome in other productions, becomes newly absorbing.

And I’m intrigued by the tale Darci Kistler tells as Lady Capulet with increasing clarity at each performance. True, she is too sweet; she allows her arms to trail out sideways too often; and there are passages in which she is far milder than Prokofiev’s music. Even so, this Lady Capulet’s dilemma becomes enthralling, dismaying. She is surrounded by a violent male patriarchy and knows it, but she somehow makes the best of this bind, trying to spread tenderness where she can, though without fruit.

How much does Mr. Martins mean his “Romeo” to be a drama about male violence? We will know better if, in future seasons, he simply makes it more of a drama. The story could be more compelling moment by moment, should be tied more intimately to the detail of music, must engross the whole company more seriously.

Why have Juliet meet Romeo twice in the ballroom without its seeming to change her life until the third time? Why have the courtiers all pay attention to the stranger Mercutio but look in every other direction when the daughter of the household is dancing with Mercutio’s friend Romeo? What is happening in the beginning, middle or end of the bedroom pas de deux?

All these things could be clarified, and Mr. Martins’s reputation as a choreographer would be improved. In the meantime he is already right to have put his faith in these eight young dancers. I note with eagerness that next week Mr. Orza and Mr. Suozzi will be dancing featured roles in Balanchine ballets, and Ms. Peck will be dancing a leading role by Christopher Wheeldon. Next, I’m impatient to see them and their fellow Juliets and Romeos in other plum roles, and before the season is quite out, please. Mine is not the only appetite now whetted.