Romeo and Juliet will be presented on Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.
(It should be especially noted that due to audience requests all matinee performances have been changed to 2 p.m.)
With an exceptionally successful premiere during Carolina Ballet’s founding season and having been enthusiastically received in Winston-Salem the following fall, Weiss felt Romeo and Juliet to be a fitting choice to open the company’s fourth season. “We finally have the beginnings of a repertoire from which to select our programs,” says Weiss. “We, of course, will continue to present new work but it is exciting to feel that we have our own rep from which to draw.” During the run of Romeo and Juliet Carolina Ballet will reach a significant milestone by presenting its 100th performance on Sept. 22 at 8 p.m.
“The best full-evening story ballets of the past quarter century are currently being choreographed right here in Raleigh by Robert Weiss,” The Washington Post wrote after the May 2000 premiere performances of Carmen. The article went on to explain that Weiss Romeo and Juliet and Carmen are choreographed in the “manner of Balanchine’s 1962 Midsummer’s Night Dream in which the plot is propelled, and the characters defined, through movement rather than mime.”
Francis Mason on WQXR (the radio station of The New York Times) echoed The Washington Post when he declared “Weiss has studied the play and puts into dance the poetry the lovers speak so that when a gesture recurs you know what they are recollecting.”
Carolina Ballet patrons will delight in this revival production in which principal dancers Melissa Podcasy “radiates youthful innocence and impetuous determination as Juliet” and Timour Bourtasenkov “invests his Romeo with dignity and romantic ardor, matching Podcasy’s depth of characterization,” says Roy Dicks of the News and Observer.
The ballet is not just about the star-crossed lovers, it is the timeless story of the feuding families that sets the stage for the ultimate tragedy. The scenes in the streets of Verona and at the masked ball when the lovers first meet are fraught with drama and tension, beautiful young ladies and dueling gentlemen, poignant pas de deux and swashbuckling sword fights. And all of this splendor is augmented by the magnificent score of Sergei Prokofiev.
Along with the Carolina Ballet company of 33 dancers, four special character guest artists are joining the cast once again for these performances: Tyler Walters, former principal dancer with the Joffrey Ballet; Julie Janus-Walters also from the Joffrey; Clay Taliaferro, a principal dancer with Jose Limon Dance Company; and Jennifer Clagett, a member of the dance faculty at Meredith College. Romeo and Juliet is accompanied by the North Carolina Symphony under the direction of Carolina Ballet Principal conductor Alfred Sturgis.
Tickets may be purchased by calling the Carolina Ballet box office at 919-719-0900 or through Ticketmaster at 919-834-4000. Group rates are available by calling (919) 469-8823.
