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Wednesday night’s masterclass proved particularly interesting to me as it featured excerpts from one of my favourite ballets, Romeo & Juliet, danced by two of my favourite principals, Edward Watson and Mara Galeazzi. In the intimate setting of the Clore Studio and sitting in the front row, I felt incredibly privileged to see these two talented dancers at work close up, coached by Jonathan Cope, who knows the dancers so well, and who has danced the lead role of Romeo so many times in his career. He is a very sympathetic coach and the interaction between the three of them was very attuned yet casual. The pianist Philip Cornfield must not be forgotten; he played Prokofiev’s score beautifully and instantly found his place whenever a phrase needed repeating. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is being performed this summer as part of the Royal Ballet’s American tour.

The first pas de deux they rehearsed was their initial meeting, when Romeo and Juliet have a few minutes together at the Capulet’s ball. Mara had to act out her role as if the stage was full of the other characters; her nurse, her parents and all the guests, and from her wonderful acting you could imagine all these people on stage with her. Edward and Mara don’t just dance the steps in rehearsal, they instantly become Romeo and Juliet, and dance and act full out. In fact at the end of the second pdd, the Balcony scene, which ends with an ardent kiss, Jonathan had to point out to the dancers that when they are in Mexico City, which being at high altitude has a reduced oxygen content in the air, they will not have sufficient breath for a long kiss and it will be a quick peck and a dash off stage for a puff of pure oxygen from a tank in the wings! Performing at high altitude will be very challenging to the dancer’s stamina and in fact they are in training now, having sessions where they rehearse wearing masks providing air with a reduced level of oxygen. They will have a few days in Mexico City before their first show, to help them acclimatize. How dancers suffer for their art!
 

The third pdd was the ‘morning after the night before’ set in Juliet’s bedroom after their wedding night. The dancers needed a few technical corrections from Jonathan but by and large they were superb and danced the scene right through. Finally the crypt scene, where Romeo dances with Juliet’s ‘dead’ body. A member of the audience asked Mara afterwards whether it hurts to have to flop about and crash to the floor as if dead. Mara answered that in rehearsal you could be careful but in performance you often did get minor bumps and bruises from this scene.

Other questions from the audience included someone asking how the dancers prepared for their roles. In Edward’s case, he said that for R&J he has studied the play and the ballet, he has watched other people’s performances on video and on stage when he has been in the ballet in another role. So far he has danced the role four times. He doesn’t aim to copy what other performers have done, but he likes to use various sources to help him create his own approach. Mara has danced Juliet many times but explained that when learning a new role she prefers to come to the role ‘fresh’, without watching other people’s versions, so that she can create her own account of the character. Both said they sometimes used video tapes to help with learning the steps. Although Edward and Mara have not danced Romeo and Juliet together yet they have danced the Balcony pdd, at the Yorkshire Ballet Seminars gala and in Brescia at ‘Mara in Motion’. From my point of view they are ideally suited and have an excellent rapport, as we saw in their recent performances of Mayerling. I can’t wait for their performances at the Opera House this autumn and in the meantime wish them well on tour.