All in the planning for modern take on classic
METICULOUS PREPARATION INCLUDING VISITING A SCHOOL AND SPENDING TIME ON THE BEAT WITH POLICE GAVE CHOREOGRAPHER ROSIE KAY MAXIMUM INSIGHT FOR HER NEW PRODUCTION OF ROMEO + JULIET. DIANE PARKES REPORTS
SHAKESPEARE’S classic tale of thwarted love Romeo and Juliet is brought up to date in a new production to be premiered in Birmingham next month.
Created by city-based choreographer Rosie Kay, the production, which takes to the stage at Birmingham Hippodrome on September 8, explores a range of contemporary issues including diversity, race, sexual equality, gang culture, knife crime and forbidden love.
But its roots are very much in Shakespeare’s famous story.
“I wanted to tackle one of the big classics in dance and came to Romeo and Juliet as it’s both the play and the ballet I love the most,” says Rosie, artistic director of Rosie Kay Dance Company. “I was lucky enough to have a very good teacher at school and we studied Romeo and Juliet and I really understood and enjoyed it. This was about the same time I fell in love for the first time, I was about 15, and you suddenly wake up to so many new emotions.”
Rosie found her inspiration for a new Romeo and Juliet on the streets of Birmingham.
“I was trying to figure out how to make it relevant to today and, a few years ago, when my son Gabriel was a toddler, I was living in Ladywood and my nearest play park was in the centre of Newtown. When you are a mum with a toddler you are a bit invisible and so I was able to watch the people around me.
“You see how people watch each other and there is tension in the air, people are checking each other out. Young people are flirting so there are love affairs but also a dynamic in the atmosphere where you feel that if they crossed lines it could be really problematic.”
Rosie wanted a diverse cast for Romeo and Juliet to reflect the city and began by exploring South Asian dance, drawing on the experience of choreographers including Sonia Sabri and Aakash Odedra, who, like Rosie, are associate artists of Birmingham Hippodrome.
As part of her research, Rosie was invited to Sparkbrook’s Nelson Mandela School by head teacher Azita Zohhadi where she discussed the play and its issues with nine and tenyear-old pupils.
“We were exploring things around gangs and identity, violence and threats of violence, equality and relationships, consent and balance between the sexes. At first I wondered if the children were too young for these themes but Azita was very clear that if we don’t talk about these things at primary school age it’s too late by the time they go to secondary school.”
Rosie also wanted to see how these issues impacted on older children and young adults so spent time on the beat with West Midlands Police, first visiting different parts of the city and then joining officers for a week in Ladywood. Here she talked to families whose children had been groomed by gangs, with some now involved in selling drugs and others having suffered gang violence and knife crime.
Following the research, Rosie created a storyline and began work on the characters but she was also keen for the dancers to help create their roles.
“I wanted the dancers to recognise themselves in the role and, in the audition process, we had long chats about their thoughts for the story and the characters. So, right from the very beginning, I was asking them to fill out these characters with their own life experience.”
Last December Rosie and the cast undertook two weeks of research and development in which the dancers improvised the roles.
“The dancers were very much cochoreographers, they really made it with me. They had such a range of dance skills from South Asian, street, contemporary, hip hop – I’m not an expert in these but I know what I want and how to get the best out of people.
“This show is about young people, different ethnicities, gang violence, things that are very modern and citybased and I didn’t want any of this to come from the wrong perspective so it’s been essential to have the collaborative approach.”
The show is 75 minutes long and set to a soundtrack by Birminghambased composer Annie Mahtani which blends her electroacoustic music with Berlioz’s dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette.
Mayowa Ogunnaike takes the part of Juliet and the dancer from London was keen to create a Juliet for today.
“My Juliet is really strong-minded,” she says. “With her and Romeo there’s more of equality in terms of power dynamics. She’s a dreamer and adventurous, an optimist but she also has this bit of an edge about her. There’s a naivety about her because she’s young but she’s also seen things which keep her grounded. She has a lot of hopes, desires and goals she’s committed to.
“I feel really connected to her character. In the research and development Rosie gave us all kinds of questions like how old our characters are, their families, what interests they have, what they want in the future, their fears and desires and we spent a lot of time talking about who that character was. There’s a lot that the audience won’t even see in the show but it makes the characters who they are.”
Mayowa has performed with a host of companies including Phoenix Dance Theatre, Uchenna Dance and ACE Dance and Music but Romeo and Juliet has been a new experience.
“We all come from different backgrounds in dance, mine is more contemporary, and we all have very different ways of moving but it’s been really inspiring. So, for example there’s a really long duet with Romeo and Juliet where marrying our styles really works. We move differently but we still move as one.”
Subhash Viman Gorania, who plays Romeo, was also attracted by the idea of a different kind of Romeo and Juliet.
“We grow up with Romeo and Juliet - there have been billions of adaptations of the story and so many Bollywood movies are based on it but they’re always through the same lens,” he says.
“Rosie really wanted to do something different. She wanted to bring it from the view of young people in Birmingham today and, especially with Birmingham being so multicultural and with gang violence, it’s a perfect setting for this story.
“In rehearsals we were given the freedom to explore our own experiences and bring them to the characters and I think that has helped shift both Romeo and Juliet. As it’s a modern day telling, it’s us, who we are, on stage.”
Working with a range of styles has also been a learning process.
“I come from a classical and contemporary South Asian dance background, Bharatanatyam and Khatak, and Rosie comes from a contemporary background so it was about us building a choreographic language together.
“Rosie wanted to make sure that Romeo was completely different to all the other gang members so it was about what makes him attractive to Juliet? We brought Indian classical dance to differentiate me from the other characters so we had a natural way of making Romeo stand out.”
From the very beginning I was asking them to fill out these characters with their own life experiences
Rosie Kay Dance Company perform Romeo + Juliet on Wednesday, September 8. For more information and tickets see www. birminghamhippodrome.com