Star-crossed lovers
Husband and wife Chengwu Guo and Ako Kondo share the stage this month as Romeo and Juliet in The Australian Ballet’s production.
Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo share the stage this month as Romeo and Juliet in The Australian Ballet’s production of Shakespeare’s great tragedy. The roles represent years of hard work for the real-life husband and wife, who have built successful careers based on perfectly complementing each other. By Jane Albert. Styled by Jillian Davison. Photographed by Jesse Lizotte.
Watching Australian Ballet principal artists and husband and wife Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo dance on stage together is an inestimable treat. Their technique is flawless, their artistry perfection and their obvious joy at dancing with one another is a delight to behold. They are indeed Australian ballet’s poster pair. There was a time when things weren’t looking quite so assured, however, at least where Guo is concerned.
The pair got together in 2012 when they were junior ballet dancers with the Australian Ballet, and while their attraction was mutual their attitudes towards dance were worlds apart. “When I joined the company I was quite talented,” Guo begins. “But …” Kondo interrupts, with a laugh. “But … ” continues Guo, “I wasn’t working hard enough and I wasn’t consistent as a dancer.” Kondo leans in and confides: “He was a naughty young boy.”
Moving to Australia after winning the prestigious 2006 Prix de Lausanne – and with it a full academic ballet scholarship to the school of his choice – Guo explains that his years at the Australian Ballet School and later the Australian Ballet followed seven extremely demanding years of ‘military-style’ ballet training at the Beijing Dance Academy in China, where he grew up.
“Because I’d gone through that crazy time I felt I could chill out and pull back a little, show my skills and techniques on stage but [offstage] I deserved a chilled life. That was my mentality,” says Guo. He regularly missed ballet class, a compulsory part of any dancer’s week. “The company wasn’t happy, they knew I was a good dancer but wanted to nurture me to make me the best dancer I could be. I was going against their idea.”
If it wasn’t for Kondo things might have turned out differently. A determined ballet dancer from the age of three when she began her training in the central Japanese city of Nagoya, Kondo has always been conscientious and driven, traits that only grew stronger once she moved to Melbourne to take up a scholarship with the Australian Ballet School in 2007.
“Ako is here to work, she has no bullshit and wants to better herself all the time, so when we got together I felt she was chasing her dream but I was slacking off,” Guo says. “So we just started working together, going to class together every single day [and now] I never miss class and I’m focused for rehearsals. There have been so many positive outcomes and the company keeps telling me how happy they are we got together!”
The couple is speaking to Vogue over Zoom during a break in rehearsals at The Primrose Potter Australian Ballet Centre in Melbourne. It is the very building where they first met 13 years ago on Kondo’s first day, when the nervous young ballet student who spoke no English was introduced to Guo, then in his first year with the main company. Surprisingly, he greeted her in Korean. “My first impression was that he was very strange – I’m Japanese, why was he talking to me in Korean?” Kondo says laughing, while Guo explains: “I chose a mutual language I knew she’d understand, because I’m Chinese and she’s Japanese, but her reaction was one of shock. It was a little bit awkward.”
Nevertheless, two years after Kondo joined the Australian Ballet, a period in which the pair enjoyed “a really chilled, really relaxed” friendship, they formalised their relationship. It was 2012, the company’s 50th anniversary, and the pair has never looked back. A wedding proposal followed, aided by Choc, one of their two beloved toy poodles who deposited a ring box at Kondo’s feet during a walk around the lake in Melbourne’s Albert Park one wet Sunday afternoon. They were married in 2019 in Kondo’s home town with a reception that included their respective families and many friends from the Australian Ballet.
Kondo might have been the inspiration for Guo to regain his focus but Guo, too, has continually provided motivation for Kondo, particularly when they had the opportunity to dance together for the first time, as guest artists in the Australian Ballet School’s regional tour in 2012. “I was really happy to dance with him for the first time. We were dancing Don Quixote which is a love story, but I was a bit nervous,” says Kondo. “I knew I had to match his standard – he is so charismatic and so great to watch – but he gave me great motivation. It was very special for us to dance a proper partnership on stage.”
The tour was such a success then-artistic director David McAllister invited them to reprise the roles of Kitri and Basilio when the main company performed Don Quixote the following year, a major compliment given they were both still junior members. In fact they are not your stereotypical ballet partnership, superficially at least. “It was really challenging for me to do any partnering [with Ako] because she’s a bit too tall for me,” says Guo, explaining that Kondo matches his height when en pointe, completely obscuring his sightline. “But we’ve made it work in our own way, we took every challenge and practised until we could do it.” The couple is now preparing to take on two of the most technically and emotionally challenging roles that exist in the classical ballet canon: the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet in choreographer John Cranko’s production of Romeo and Juliet. It is a ballet beloved by audiences worldwide, whether for its tragic love story, exquisite steps, delicate costumes or Sergei Prokofiev’s rich, tailored score. It is also notoriously difficult to dance. But for Kondo it is a dream come true.
“The role of Juliet is on my ballet bucket list; it’s beautiful and tragic and a pure love story, such a special ballet for a ballerina to dance and I’ve always wanted to do that ballet with Chen,” says Kondo, who fell in love with the ballet when she was a child in Japan and saw Romanian prima ballerina Alina Cojocaru dance the famous balcony scene. For Guo, landing the role of Romeo is another milestone for a dancer who for many years failed to be offered romantic lead roles.
“WE JUST STARTED WORKING TOGETHER, GOING TO CLASS TOGETHER EVERY SINGLE DAY [AND NOW] I NEVER MISS CLASS AND I’M FOCUSED FOR REHEARSALS. THERE HAVE BEEN SO MANY POSITIVE OUTCOMES AND THE COMPANY KEEPS TELLING ME HOW HAPPY THEY ARE WE GOT TOGETHER!”
“When I joined the company I was always used as a technical dancer, not a prince, so whenever those roles came up I wouldn’t be cast even though I wanted to do them,” he says. “But I believe to be a principal you have to be able to do both. Back then I thought, ‘I will never be a Romeo’, but I worked so hard on all the ‘princey’ roles where you have to express emotions and dance beautifully, and I didn’t think I could do it, but I worked my way up. I did Stephen Baynes’s Swan Lake, the Nutcracker prince, the Cinderella prince. And now this Romeo and Juliet opportunity comes along and I would trade anything to do it.”
As well as being technically demanding Romeo and Juliet requires a huge amount emotionally. Not only do the lead couple have to cast their minds and bodies back to their teenage years, given the age of the doomed young couple – “I’m still a kid,” Guo says with a laugh – but the tragically ironic ending finds them in a passionate but lifeless embrace after they each take their own lives, presuming the other dead. Both Kondo and Guo agree it is a skill that takes years of training to draw enough of the character to give audiences a convincing and fulfilling performance but not take the emotional baggage home at night’s end.
“We need to train ourselves to be able to access our emotions very quickly and get out very quickly. I’ve seen dancers in the past struggle, they can’t get out of character, and I think that’s a problem,” says Guo. For Kondo, the sound of the curtain dropping at show’s end is her signal to come back into herself. “I do feel energy draining at the end of the show but when the curtain comes down that’s the sign for me,” she says. “And it makes me appreciate Chen, that we’re having a good life as a couple. We don’t have the parent issues of Romeo and Juliet. Especially since I’m Japanese and he’s Chinese it could have happened to us, but we live in an [era] when everyone’s so open. We’re so lucky.”
Given the decades the pair has spent training they no longer practise at home, although they always go through the day together, nutting out what they could have done better and what to work on the next day. They clearly revel in relaxing in each other’s company – with their cherished dogs of course – visiting the dog park and savouring any number of Melbourne’s brilliant cafes.
Guo finds video games quite meditative, preferring exercising his brain to what he deems the mindlessness of social media. “It keeps my brain sharp and if I spend time on Instagram a whole hour can pass and it feels very unproductive.” Kondo is currently busy when offstage finishing a five-year part-time diploma of dance education offered through the Australian Ballet School that Guo has already obtained. Given the career of a professional dancer is so brutally short, the pair is mindful of preparing for life beyond dance, at least in terms of performing.
“We want to pass on the knowledge and experience we have as principal dancers, but being a good dancer isn’t enough to be a good teacher. You also need to learn,” says Kondo, adding they’re both open to where that future may take them – be it Australia, China or Japan. “Even though we’re not going to quit ballet now, one day it will come and we think and talk about it a lot,” says Guo. “The thing with Ako and I is we don’t want to settle for mediocre. We want everything to be the best, and we want to use our ability to its fullest so we can make it as good as we can.”
The Australian Ballet performs Romeo and Juliet at Arts Centre Melbourne August 27 to September 4, and the Sydney Opera House from November 5-24.