National Ballet of Canada – John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet

reviewed by Paula Citron
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Romeo and Juliet
National Ballet of Canada
At the Four Seasons Centre until Mar. 22
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Flash back 12 years to a showcase given by Canada’s National Ballet School. A scrawny teenage kid is performing the fiendishly difficult lead male role in La Bayadere. He shows tremendous promise.

Flash forward to 2009, and the filled-out Jason Reilly of Stuttgart Ballet, now 29, is a guest artist with the National Ballet. His Romeo in John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet is near perfection – and happily, come this September, Reilly’s joining the National as its newest principal dancer.

And then there is his Juliet. Greta Hodgkinson is one of the National’s most fearless ballerinas which meant that she matched Reilly’s wild abandon.

If truth be told, Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet is a failsafe ballet because the choreography is such a wonderful match for the music. But when dancers go beyond mere steps to invest themselves in the characters and the story, then magic happens on stage.

Romeo and Juliet continues at the Four Seasons Centre until Mar. 22.