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The Royal Ballet’s production of Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet travels so well that even handling last minute flight delays and a heat wave on the final stop of their tour couldn’t dent the glorious classicism onstage. The company met with Philadelphia with the city’s famed humidity in full 98-degree bloom last week. It was so oppressive, if fact, that it kept people away at the outdoor Mann Center in Fairmount Park, which featured not a breeze. For those who sweated it out, though, the ballet dispatched any discomfort in this bucolic setting of the Mann amphitheatre, with the city skyline glittering in the background.

First, the breadth of the multi-tiered physical production by Nicholas Georgiadis is so well done that it steals attention from the dancing, same for his lush costume designs. The burnished browns, purples, reds and oranges costumes may be elaborate, but dance functional to show the body. MacMillan’s streamlined narrative tells Shakespeare’s tragedy without making unfold like a ballet pop up book.

The Royal’s technical prowess and MacMillan’s choreographic invention always evident in the pristine classicism shown in the ballet’s explosive fight scenes, the clarity of the transitional phrasing, the gestural acting and virtuosic theatricality in the divertissements.

The stage can already be ignited with swordfights, for instance, but MacMillan doesn’t let character bystanders idle, they are drawn into the action ingeniously to add to the suspense. MacMillan is such a great choreographer that even with 50 people in non-unison motion, focus of the scene is always clear and the stage composition is always maintained.

Yet, even with all of these riches, this is not a totally unencumbered production. In this performance, some scrabbled ensemble pacing led to muddy unison by the corps de ballet. Also distracting were two short expositional scenes which were ill-paced and airlessly danced. Among the principal cast Johan Kobborg’s Romeo and Leanne Benjamin’s Juliet delivered strong technical performances, but they lacked chemistry in key moments.

Benjamin bolted out of the gate maturing very fast from a lass at her nurse’s knee, to having the hots for Romeo. Rushed pacing made everything Benjamin did to establish character look underlined and unfinished. In her early scenes Kobborg, she seemed to run the gamut of emotions from stoic to dazed. In the back half, Benjamin eventually opened up her interior performance. At the reception, the way she pulled away in a difficult circular backward arabesques was ripe with expressive artistry.

These deficiencies, by the end, were anomalous and far outweighed by the production’s many strengths.

A highlight is Tybalt’s challenge to Mercutio that starts out mockingly and escalates to a bare knuckle danceur duel that laces fencing choreography with ballet on a level rarely achieved. Bennet Gartside’s Tybalt and Josè Martin’s Mercutio engage a four-sword battle royal and this sequence is thrillingly staged. It seemed like all of the words that brought Tybalt alive in Shakespeare were transposed in Gartside’s physical performance. The visceral power he achieves in a nuanced and underplayed death scene, that can so often be over acted and under-danced.

The balcony scene produced gorgeous stage pictures in which Kobborg and Benjamin fused their chemistry with gorgeous close body turns and lyric musicality. Even some knotty lifts sequences didn‘t detract. Kobborg held dramatic ballonne in his aerial work and kept his turns centered and finished. Benjamin’s scenes rejecting her arranged marriage and sealing her fate, are beautifully played.

The six men brandishing Mandolins and sporting pink tights bound in with tight unison and breakout revelry, led by Steven McRae (in brown tights) slicing across the stage in huge jumps and solid landings, with enough air for character flourishes.

Local classical musicians were assembled for the Mann Festival Orchestra for the performances. Prokofiev’s tragic decrescendos and diabolical surges led to some wayward horns. And some heat vanquished strings disappearing in some of the Mann’s acoustical wormholes, but the fanfares and narrative passages were robustly paced.

Swan Lake

Two nights later Anthony Dowell‘s production of ‘Swan Lake’ proved the more cohesive of the two productions even though it is a trans-era choreographic collaboration of the 19th century masters Marius Petipa- Lev Ivanov and RB choreographers David Bintley and the legendary Frederick Ashton. Dowell orchestrates four brilliantly structured acts lavishly full of iconic images and economic cuts, displaying RB’s mastery of narrative balletic storytelling.

The production design is a potent blend of fantasy macabre- Imperial Russian Palace meets Edward Gorey- gold and crystal spidery gates, 8 ft candelabras that Liberace would have killed for- are just two examples. When two dozen swans in wilted feathery tutus come over the dreamily foreboding lakefronts, it becomes a ballet dream everyone should experience. Indeed, the 3rd star in this production is the supple transcreature deportment of this corps de ballet, whether stilled or in motion, the unison work is razor sharp and the ensemble lines serene. Surprise that the famous entwined quartet, The Cygnets, were a little unbalanced and even campy ala Ballets Trockadero. Deirdre Chapman and Isabel McMeekan as the Two Swans, similarly came off as a bit detached even for ethereal avia.
 

As Odette-Odile, Tamara Rojo transcendent artistry commanded in every moment. Her attack is thrilling, her phrasing pulses through the music and her expressive artistry carves a riveting Odette. Rojo and Frederico Bonelli’s as Siegfried achieved smoldering chemistry in the central pas deux, never cheating the precision of the lifts, turns and arabesques. Rojo‘s expressive port de bra variation in a beautifully paced pirouette runs, slowed down in the middle of a turn for an arm nuance or speeded up, all flowed within her characterization. Bonelli was a most attendant Prince, but seemed reserved in his solos, like he was dialing it back from what he normally does.

Everyone was surprised after a long break when RB’s director Monica Mason (who danced Odette-Odile 31 years previously in the company’s last appearance at the Mann) announced that Rojo had injured herself and wouldn’t be dancing the Odile. Roberta Marquez would dance the Black Swan act for the first time partnered with Bonelli. Marquez immediately brought over her fiery Odile with control and flair. Much to the credit of both dancers the fact that this was the first time, only noticeable in a couple of shaky pointe poses. Marquez traveled a little during Odile’s famous 32 fouettes and she only pumped out 30, but it hardly matter, because everybody loved her by then.

The divertissement masked ballroom scene, with the brilliant swirl of costumes for dance of the Princesses, the Spanish dancers, Czadas Cossack corps (with those signature kneeled lunges) and gypsy tarantella, all richly textured danse coloratura.