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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
It is a ballet !, 5 Nov 2000
The music of this ballet is brilliant, delicate, extremely expressive and dramatic. Every moment in the show finds its strength and its emotion in the music itself. All the scenes where a crowd occupies the stage are enriched with popular dances, be it on the market place or during the ball at the Capulets. But we are waiting for the more intimate scenes with Romeo and Juliet and those scenes become dainty, light, but never joyful, because we feel under the surface the drama that is coming and will find its full expression in the vault at the end. The fight scenes on the other hand are first of all and above all sombre and dark, bleak and full of shadows, the shadows of our memory and of our inherited culture : we know that playing with such a fire is deadly, fatal and lethal, and the music is there to make that hellish fire of hatred burn anew and burn ablaze. But it is a ballet and The Royal Ballet of London makes a miracle with a gorgeous setting, with superb costumes, with delicate and light dancing, all the time. Naturally Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev are the stars, but stars in a sky very well staffed and packed with smaller stars, but stars all the same. And the gleaming light of the main stars is enhanced by the twinkling lights of the others. They do not dominate. They are carried to the top by the magic carpet of all the dancers that fly high and swift in the sky of the music. And this classical dancing is also enriched with the expressivity of every movement, of every bearing of the heads, of every look in the eyes, so much so that we do not even know where to start looking, watching, admiring and satiating our desire of beauty. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.
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