Inside Shakespeare’s mind :

Peare dance

I can imagine the fits thrown by Shakespeare if someone as much suggested one of his plays to be danced. He would have thought such a guy to be crazy to imagine such a possibility when at his time female characters were played by girls and men.

Now it is surprising how audiences have come to accept Shakespeare ballets over dramas. How Shakespeare inspired choreographers to mount ballets; how he rammed into classical-music domain and literally dragged composers to score magnificent music for Bard’s ballets and how every ballet company around the world boarded his plays. Vibrant and fascinating, they are danced over the years and some held in repertories to be danced later.

Choreographers have a wide choice from Shakespeare’s plays and perhaps the most danced tragedy being Romeo and Juliet. They encompassed the poet’s youthful romances and invite ebullient scores from Tchaikovsky to the modern composer.

Originally, it was presumed that ballet in Shakespeare’s work could flop due to the absence of his powerful, enigmatic dialogue that audiences were used to but overnight this scenario changed for good. People started to appreciate Shakespeare ballets. They were not concerned about dialogue when they were mesmerised with ballet movements and story-value.

Classical composers opted to score for ballet over-concert hall orchestrations and many were the iconic masters.

Rudolf Nureyev and Merle Park as Hamlet and Ophelia in Royal Ballet’s Hamlet.

Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn in Romeo and Juliet produced by the Royal Ballet

So, Shakespeare the great playwright not only captivated and charmed dancers but also choreographers. Some such ballets are:

Romeo and Julliet
Hamlet
Macbeth
Twelft Night
Othello
The Tempest
Cleopatra
Midsummer Night’s Dream
Antony and Cleopatra
The Taming of the Shrew
Much Ado about Nothing
Coriolanus

These amount to twelve full length ballets off his thirty eight plays that makes Shakespeare proud in the world of performing arts. To place ballet as an art in its historical context is a rewarding exercise. The dance world texture conjures and reflexes the ages in which people live. Shakespeare ballets to stand apart from classical, modern and contemporary ones, is in itself monumental. The choreographers find this to be a tedious effort but the outcome is so triumphant, the reward is high and mighty that for them to dwell into the eras that represent the Bard’s dramas can be tiresome and hassling. Yet the creative endeavour that go into such ballets make the English proud of their playwright.

The three elements of ballet are melody, rhythm and harmony and in this concept, choreographers had to evolve music and movement to conform ballet. Shakespeare’s drama was always very complicated especially when they were written with historical backdrop with enormous cast that can emerge from battle ground or street scenes, most of them are left out but of late, slide projections in the background help overcome this problem and they add authenticity to the particular story that unfold in ballet.

Unlike in drama the time gap is essential as much as important and pose a problem. Once dancing commences on stage, it has to move on without a pause to meet the allotted timing for music. Whereas in drama, the actors can use their discretion and the stretch the time limit to the required length. Music is the expression in ballet while dialogue is the soul of drama and between the two, nothing can be compromised.

A convenient starting point for the beginning of Shakespeare ballet was the composition introduced by ballet-masters until the choreographers took over and modified the themes and stories to fit in. Over the years we have witnessed the invention of composition and the musical notations falling in line with these specialised dancing.

The most noticeable advances during the beginning of these drama-dancing, was the freedom given by composers in their inspirational scores that enabled the choreographers to put every detail in place. Some attempted symbolism where dancing matched the text of Shakespeare’s tragedies such as Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.