Derived from Shakespeare’s tragic love story Romeo and Juliet, Natalie Weir’s R & J takes us on the intense emotional rollercoaster that is love and heartache. Set across three different eras and featuring three different couples, the production re-envisions the classic love story via three contrasting, filmic vignettes: the contemporary grungy nightspots of Fortitude Valley, the Renaissance setting of the original Shakespearean text, and within 1950s suburban bliss. Each episode, while operating separately from the other, is seductively tied together, penetrating to the heart of passion and highlighting, with poise, vitality and finesse, the physical and emotional core of the lovers’ relationships.
The dancers are agile and graceful, performing dynamically as an ensemble and executing graceful manoeuvres with poise and ease. The contemporary dance style of the performance is a perfect tool for telling the classic story, and Weir’s choreography is by turns vulnerable, intense and passionate. The dancers take on her choreography with zeal; a wonderful opportunity to see each dancer within the company shine in their solo performances.
The set and lighting are invaluable in creating the smoky ambience for this journey through joy and heartache, with components of the set (described by Weir herself as “deceptively simple and simply spectacular”) moving and transforming like fate itself to tear the lover’s apart or unite them in death.
The element that unites all the pieces of this production is the live music. The band Topology plays to the same heartbeat as the lovers, creating a medley of jazzy melodies to match the action; the perfect complement to the story.
A masterful work of contemporary dance telling a timeless love story, R & J is best encapsulated in the words of the Bard himself: “Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.”
Rating: Four and a half stars
Expressions Dance Company and QPAC present
R & J
Choreographed by Natalie Weir
Music composed by John Babbage
Design by Bruce McKinven
Dancers from Expressions Dance Company: Rhiannon McLean, Richard Causer, Elise May, Samantha Mitchell, Jack Ziesing and David Williams and featuring students from QUT and ACPA
Music by Topology (with guest pianist Marialy Pacheco)
Playhouse, QPAC
July 15 – 23
Running time: Approximately 1 hour without interval
