6 minute read
Romeo + Juliet 16
Mayowa Ogunnaike as Juliet and Subhash Viman Gorania as Romeo. © Brian Slater. characters who they are. ‘I hope the audience connect to the characters and can relate to them. It’s a representation of a gang culture in Birmingham but it’s also a love story and a tragedy and people will really feel the emotion coming from us.’
Mayowa has performed with a host of companies including Phoenix Dance Theatre, Uchenna Dance and ACE Dance and Music but Romeo + Juliet has been a new experience. ‘We all come from different backgrounds in dance, mine is more contemporary, and we all have very different ways of moving but it’s been really inspiring. So, for example there’s a really long duet with Romeo and Juliet where marrying our styles really works. We move differently but we still move as one.’
Subhash Viman Gorania, who plays Romeo, was also attracted by the idea of a different kind of Romeo and Juliet. ‘We grow up with Romeo and Juliet - there have been billions of adaptations of the story and so many Bollywood movies are based on it but they’re always through the same lens,’ he says. ‘Rosie really wanted to do something different. She wanted to bring it from the view of young people in Birmingham today and, especially with Birmingham being so multicultural and with gang violence, it’s a perfect setting for this story.
‘In rehearsals we were given the freedom to explore our own experiences and bring them to the characters and I think that has helped shift both Romeo and Juliet. As it’s a modern day telling, it’s us, who we are, on stage.’ Working with a range of styles has also been a learning process.
‘I come from a classical and contemporary South Asian dance background, Bharatanatyam and Khatak, and Rosie comes from a contemporary background so it was about us building a choreographic language together. ‘In doing so, I feel like I’ve got to understand some of how Rosie choreographs characters which is new for me and she’s getting a better understanding of classical Indian movements.
‘Rosie wanted to make sure that Romeo was completely different to all the other gang members so it was about what makes him attractive to Juliet? We brought Indian classical dance to differentiate me from the other characters so we had a natural way of making Romeo stand out.’
The Leicester-based dancer and choreographer has worked with many leading companies and choreographers including Birmingham-based Sampad, Sonia Sabri, Akademi, Chitraleka Dance Academy and Aakash Odedra. Currently artistic director of Morph Dance Company and dance artist in residence at Leicester’s Peepul Centre, Subhash believes this new Romeo + Juliet will resonate with local audiences.
‘Rosie has managed to pick a team of nine dancers who are so completely different and the diversity is shown in the choreography so I really think it brings the diversity of Birmingham to the stage. There will be characters in there who audience members know, have met or have experienced and will connect .’
Diane Parkes is a freelance journalist specialising in the arts. A reporter for more than 30 years, she has worked for newspapers, magazines, online and arts organisations locally and nationally.
© Marta Tiberiu.
Radio and Juliet
Choreography Edward Clug Music Radiohead (Presented under licence from Warner Chappell Music Limited. Master rights holder, Beggars Group Media Limited) Sets Marko Japelj Costume Leo Kulaš Lighting Tomaž Premzl Répétiteurs Matjaž Marin, Tijuana Križman Hudernik World premiere: Slovene National Theatre, 2005 First performance by Birmingham Royal Ballet, 14 October 2021, Birmingham Hippodrome.
THE MAN WHO MARRIED RADIOHEAD AND SHAKESPEARE
Edward Clug, choreographer of Radio and Juliet in conversation with Deborah Weiss
Edward Clug in Radio and Juliet. © Marta Tiberiu.
Romanian born choreographer, Edward Clug, is about to become a more familiar name in the UK, thanks to an invitation from Carlos Acosta and Birmingham Royal Ballet, to stage his internationally renowned production of Radio and Juliet.
For the last 30 years he has lived in, danced with (1991) and was appointed artistic director (2003) of the Maribor Ballet in Slovenia. When we meet on Zoom, it is immediately apparent that he is passionate about every aspect of his life there.
Softly spoken and unassuming, his Radio and Juliet, to music by Radiohead, was conceived and performed for the first time in 2005 in Maribor for the Slovene National Theatre. It was an instant success and since then the company has been invited all over the world to perform it (and Clug’s other works) from Jacob’s Pillow to St Petersburg, Singapore, Biarritz, Seoul, Milan, Tel Aviv and Pittsburg, to name just a few. It has become a signature work for the company.
I’m keen to ask him why and how he thinks its success came about. ‘More that the complete ballet, I would say it’s because many great principal dancers have taken part of it and danced it at galas. Denis Matvienko and his wife, Anastasia started it, dancing in New York and London, and I presume Carlos has had a chance to see it. Of course we were performing it in many dance festivals but I would say that they [Matvienkos] made a very concrete impact.’
He does, of course, know his own dancers very well but I wonder what the challenges have been when setting the complete work on a company that is new to him. ‘We’ve already had the experience of transferring the piece to other companies, different dancers and personalities. The choreographic structure is very defined, so in that sense, people always aim for that specifically. Once the dancers get used to this new vocabulary, from that moment on, we want to focus on the dancers’ personalities, keeping the existing structure whilst allowing the dancers to find their own freedom. It’s always been challenging but I think the dancers find it attractive, it’s very creative. It’s been the same with Birmingham Royal Ballet. I’m sure the dancers are going to shine in it.’
Clug made the decision to digress from the original Shakespeare play and create a scenario where Juliet decides not to take her own life. Quite a radical u-turn. ‘I had decided to make her the only female in the piece, building everything else around her, to create her own universe from her perspective. The piece is also retrospective, it documents what did and didn’t happen to her. It relies on the audience’s perspective - to follow the performance through their own experience.
This was my first attempt to delve into narrative ballets, having done mostly abstract. I was aware of the brilliance of the MacMillan and Cranko versions and didn’t want to offend the purity of these. I felt we had to go into the 21st century and take it a step further using Radiohead music - my favourite band. They continue to reinvent themselves and I would like to think that I do this too. It was definitely a turning point in my career and triggered interest in the company internationally.
‘It was not easy to make the decision about the music because it was very personal to me. I was sharing an intimacy in my work with the public. Songs that are used in the performance, I can’t listen to in the same way. Ideas came from the music and the story. It was purely instinctive. The characters are not obviously depicted but for example, when Mercutio dies, his solo is to Bullet Proof… I wish I was. There is an additional element for audiences because they listen to the lyrics which
