Roméo et Juliette

1996 CREATION FOR BALLET PRELJOCAJ / 1990 Creation for Lyon Opera Ballet

Piece for 24 dancers
Choreography Angelin Preljocaj
Decor Enki Bilal
Costumes Enki Bilal, Igor Chapurin
Music Serge Prokofiev, Roméo et Juliette
Sound creation Goran Vejvoda
Lighting Jacques Chatelet
Choreologist Dany Lévêque
Dancers Ballet Preljocaj Nataly Aveillan, Bénédicte Bos, Julie Bour, Claire Burnet, Bérengère Chasseray, Nadine Comminges, Claudia De Smet, Vinciane Gombrovich, Soleil Koster, Aurélie Lobin, Karine Mommessin, Barbara Sarreau, José-Maria Alvès, Jean-Vincent Boudic, Emilio Calcagno, Philippe Combes, Sébastien Durand, Friedrich Gehrig, Sylvain Groud, David Lerat, Stéphane Loras, Nicolas Maye, Loïc Noisette, Emmanuel Soulhat
Coproduction Théâtre de St Quentin en Yvelines, La Coursive - Scène nationale de La Rochelle, Les Gémeaux - Sceaux-scène nationale, Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, Fondation BNP-Paribas Chorégraphie primée aux Victoires de la Musique en 1997
Duration 90min
Premiered with Lyon Opera Ballet on 27 December 1990
Premiered with Ballet Preljocaj on 12 July 1996, Gymnase du Val de l’Arc, Danse à Aix Festival, Aix-en-Provence (France)

"In an improbable Verona, fictitious rather than futuristic, passably dilapidated, housing a favored ruling class (Juliet’s family) and a miserable and exploited population (Romeo’s world), the meeting of two lovers is banned and outlawed; the omnipresent, muscled militia ordained by Juliet’s family to maintain social order is not only a Shakespearian image of fatality, it’s also the influence of power over one of the most essential individual freedoms : the freedom to love.

Even if they comply at times, Romeo and Juliet each refute their imposed way of life in their respective social classes, which are closed to all communication as dictated by the militia of collective consciousness, hence the scandal of this love. Both want to be elsewhere, both feel the necessity to drop out ; both aspire to what the other has. The passionate shock will permit them to move forward, to dare to escape the fate that was traced for them."

Angelin Preljocaj

Around the creation