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Vishneva and Corella in "Romeo and Juliet" at ABT

"Romeo and Juliet"
American Ballet Theater

Metropolitan Opera House
New York, NY
July 10, 2006

by Michael Popkin
Copyright 2006 by Michael Popkin

This Spring has been Diana Vishneva’s season at ABT.  Not only her devoted fans, but many critics, as well, have been effusive in their praise of her. Whenever Vishneva appears, ABT nearly sells out New York’s huge Metropolitan Opera House, its home during the Spring season. That was the case Monday night. There was a palpable sense of excitement in the air when ABT opened the final week of its Spring season in New York to a packed house for its first performance of MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet” with Vishneva and Angel Corella in the title roles and a supporting cast that included  (among others) Herman Cornejo as Mercutio, David Hallberg as Paris, Gennadi Saveliev as Tybalt, Veronica Part as Lady Capulet, Sacha Radetsky as Benvolio, and the venerable Frederic Franklin as Friar Laurence. There is no question that Vishneva is a star performer, but some of the very things that constitute her great appeal work against her as Juliet.

To start with the positive, the ballet as a whole looked good. Compared to MacMillan’s “Manon,” which I also saw this spring at ABT, “Romeo and Juliet” is a masterpiece.  Where “Manon” appears dramatically diffuse and often self indulgent, “Romeo” is a compact and well--paced drama with memorable and mostly appropriate dancing integrated into the action in an innovative fashion. The story is well told and the work benefits from a wonderful dancing score by Sergei Prokofiev.  And, though the action in this “Romeo and Juliet,” which is modeled on the famous Lavrovsky version, is more melodramatic and operatic in feel than Shakespeare’s original (late 19th century verissimo opera seems to be the modality of this ballet, think Tosca or Madame Butterfly) — these very qualities also make the work particularly forgiving performance-wise.  By definition melodrama more easily absorbs overacting and overselling by its performers — even invites it — than does more lyrical and poetic material. Monday night, this ability of MacMillan’s ballet to look good even when being overacted was particularly welcome in light of the excessive nature of Vishneva’s characterization of Juliet and how this distorted the entire performance.   

Whatever the virtues of her “Giselle” and her “Manon,” Vishneva appeared fundamentally miscast as Juliet and never settled into her characterization in a comfortable or consistent manner. Just as her dancing is sometimes too big and hyper-extended for the classical cannon, her portrayal of Juliet seemed too large, emotionally crude and cartoonish. She began her performance with passages of almost infantile little- girlishness, proceeded to a period when she reminded me of Kitri in “Don Quixote,” and then ended with a too knowing and aggressive feminine sexuality the moment she was left alone with Romeo. 

Playing with her dolls and then jumping into her nurse’s lap at the end of her opening scene, she resembled a giant female “Baby Huey.” Meeting first Paris and then Romeo for the first time, she batted her eyes and pouted at her suitors: “Betty Boop” on a bad day. The feminine sexuality that followed was even more inappropriate.  In the balcony scene with Romeo, for example, when she took his hand ostensibly to place it upon her heart in the opening gesture of the pas de deux, the phrase read in the audience more as “Feel my Breast” than “Here is my heart … I trust You.” When danced by other ballerinas this week (Xiomara Reyes for example on Wednesday afternoon), the gesture was tender, innocent and trusting, a declaration of innocent love. In Vishneva’s hands it appeared aggressively lascivious.  The characterization did improve a great deal in Act III, however, due to Vishneva’s very full bloodedness.  Getting out of bed with Romeo, you could believe in her distracted passion at parting from him and it was also easy to imagine so wild a girl stabbing herself after finding Romeo dead at her side. 

It would be easy to dismiss her performance with these observations. In fairness, however, a counterbalancing point must be made and this has to do with Vishneva’s complete and utter sincerity and honesty even at moments of dramatic excess. Perhaps it is a profoundly Russian thing that, despite overacting, over-dancing and overselling her material, she presented herself with conviction at all times and this was also perhaps the thing that allowed her to pull off this performance in spite of its obvious faults. If it was a cartoonish and at times incoherent performance, it was not a mannered one. And anyway, there was always her immensely captivating and alluring physical presence to palliate and even to redeem things. Her physical attraction as a dancer is indeed mesmerizing. And anyway, this “Romeo and Juliet” is, as was said, a forgiving work with respect to dramatic expect.

Perhaps the worst thing about Vishneva’s performance, though, was what it did to Corella’s. Romeo is one of Angel Corella’s best roles, if not his very best one. It suits him physically with its speed, its finesse and its innocence. Corella also acts the role with sensitivity. On Wednesday afternoon, for example, dancing opposite Xiomara Reyes (who suits him wonderfully as a partner) his dramatization of Romeo’s progression from initial infatuation with Rosaline; to love at first sight with Juliet; to his angry and bitter killing of Tybalt in revenge for Tybalt’s killing of Mercutio; to all the tragic complications that follow, was brilliant. On Monday night, on the other hand, Vishneva’s over-the-top qualities made all of this invisible. Next to her orgasmic femininity, his Romeo appeared merely prim and proper. Instead of a tragic hero, he became at most a nice boy who was hit by a force of nature and destroyed. 

The best performance of anyone on stage Monday night was surely Herman Cornejo’s as Mercutio. Cornejo has just the right physical look and emotional simplicity to portray Romeo’s arrogant and mischievous friend. And the physical arsenal of his dancing is likewise immense and well suited to the several demanding solos in this role. No one has the spring in his jump that Cornejo does today, the deep plié, or the quiet ease in his upper body either, and he has in addition gained immensely as an actor over the past few seasons. One also could not help noticing, however, during this performance, the degree to which something sloppy and inelegant has begun to creep into the classical finish of Cornejo’s dancing over these past few seasons of prominence at ABT. It is as if the lack of attention to placement and finish, the sacrifice of purity to dramatic effect, that characterize the company’s style (and if there is a company style at ABT, this is it) have infected Cornejo too in his six years there. You see him now slurring and abbreviating his footwork and his finishes, losing his verticality and falling out of his turns, as well as selling his dancing to the audience, in a way he didn’t do when he was younger. Cornejo in his early days at ABT had a combination of bravura technique and modesty, indeed innocence in his presentation, which is increasingly absent from his dancing today.  Perhaps it’s inevitable but you don’t want to see the trend continue.   

The performance as a whole was well rehearsed, particularly for the first night of a week’s run and the choreography for the corps de ballet in Acts I and II is also among MacMillan’s best. The dance for the entire company that opens Act II, a distorted march to a lurching melody, is very striking indeed. And, unlike the blocking for the corps in “Manon” where you are often confused as to who the principal dancers are, in “Romeo and Juliet,” MacMillan guides the audience’s eye and you can track the most important action on the stage without distraction. The company Monday night was also strong in the subsidiary roles. Newly minted principal dancer David Hallberg was a Paris who could have (and perhaps should have) truly tested Juliet’s attachment to her Romeo and Gennadi Saveliev was appropriately proud, arrogant and aggressive as Tybalt. Saveliev’s importance to the company this season in such character roles cannot be overstated.  Erica Cornejo, Stella Abrera and Kristi Boone were also excellent as the Three Harlots who have appealing but strangely prominent roles in this ballet, though less prominent than those of the prostitutes in “Manon.”  MacMillan, it seems, never met a prostitute he didn’t like as a character in one of his ballets.

Photo of Diana Vishneva courtesy of American Ballet Theatre.

Volume 4, No. 27
July 17, 2006

copyright ©2006 Michael Popkin
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