Jean-Christophe Maillot’s version shares the tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet through the eyes of the remorseful Friar Lawrence. This original perspective on the well-known story enables us to deeply connect with the themes of pride, fear, excitement, and subsequent impulsiveness. The minimalistic sets amplify the dancers’ emotions, allowing audience members to see themselves in the turmoil and passion of the characters on stage.

The contemporary choreography incorporates elements of cinematography and flows freely to allow the dancers to embody the full emotion of the characters. The movements, even in moments of tragedy, are full of graceful elongation and musicality.

“Maillot’s style is neither purely classical nor exclusively contemporary. To paraphrase his teacher Rosella Hightower, he likes to create ‘a union of opposites’: a dialogue in which the on-pointe tradition and the avant-garde are no longer mutually exclusive.”
–Jacob Lansky, Stage and Cinema

Mischa Santora has elevated the Boston Ballet Orchestra to its greatest heights. Roméo et Juliette includes the full Sergei Prokofiev score.

Prokofiev’s score was not well received by the original cast: the original choreographer (Leonid Mikhailovich Lavrovsky for the Kirov ballet in 1940) made Prokofiev change it, so the final version is a compilation of the composer’s original score and new music further refined to enhance balletic movement.

Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Roméo et Juliette premiered on December 23, 1996 with Les Ballets de Monte Carlo. There are many versions of the ballet performed by companies from around the world; the first production was by the Kirov in 1940 (Galina Ulanova and Konstantin Sergeyev). Other versions have been created by John Cranko, Mikhail Lavrovsky, Kenneth MacMillian, Mats Ek, Rudolf Nureyev, Alexei Ratmansky, San Goh, and Oleg Vinogradov. Boston Ballet most recently performed Cranko’s version in 2018.