Romeo and Juliet: a Mariinsky masterclass

According to some textbooks, one thing the fathers of Soviet choreography hastened to remove from ballet was that awkward-looking language of gestures generally referred to as ‘ballet mime’. Which explains why most Russian versions of Swan Lake lack familiar mime dialogues. And when it came to creating new ballets that required silent acting, such as Lavrosky’s 1940 Romeo and Juliet, the early Soviet dance-makers opted for a more naturalistic form of expressive gestural solutions.

Yet, as is often the case with theatre practices, what was once innovative and naturalistic now looks as trite as 19th-century pantomime. Whether the problem comes down to training new generations of dancers in understanding the long-lost Soviet mime aesthetic, or to the fact that such an aesthetic is dated, it is difficult to say. What is certain is that exaggerated expressions and badly rendered silent movie-type situations can detract greatly from what remains a fine example of past dance-making. Which was, in my view, the main flaw in an otherwise superb performance of Lavrosky’s masterwork last week at the beginning of the sold-out season of the Mariinsky Ballet in London. True, some might find Lavrosky’s over-simplistic choreographic solutions risibly naive. But while mime was not at its best in the performance of Romeo and Juliet I attended, little or nothing can be said against the refined approach to the stylistic nuances and traits of the old dance text.

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Few companies in the world show the same attention to detail as the Mariinsky Ballet, or the same religious attention to both history and performance traditions as far as dancing is concerned. Lavrosky’s ingenious simplicity might not suit those used to the more modern-looking choreographic modes of either Kenneth MacMillan or John Cranko, but when tackled as beautifully as it was last week, such simplicity acquires the intensity of an old sonnet.