Stephen Montoya
A group of performers are close to unveiling their rendition of one of William Shakespeare’s most famous works without uttering a single word. This might sound unorthodox given Shakespeare’s prowess and playful use of the old English vernacular. However, it makes perfect sense if said work were transformed into a ballet. That’s exactly what the troupe at Fort Worth’s very own Ballet Frontier are currently preparing for.
In honor of the upcoming holiday of love, known as Valentine’s Day, Ballet Frontier has adapted Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into an unforgettable pantomime set to Sergei Prokofiev’s iconic score, full of action, drama, and luxurious costumes. Performances of this legendary tale of love found and tragically lost is taking place on February 17th at 7:30 p.m. and February 18th at 2:00 p.m. at IM Terrell PAC as an homage to the complexities of that thing we call love.
The cast that fills fair Verona for this upcoming ballet consists of over 60 performers that all come from various backgrounds, skill levels, and age ranges. At the core of Romeo and Juliet are Ballet Frontier’s 17 company dancers. Add one artist in residence, nine apprentices, seven trainees, and two interns, and you have what equals a sizeable pool of talent to choose from.
Set against a backdrop of the 18th century, these performers are already many weeks into their practice routines, refining their marks and ballet moves for a three-act performance that boasts three 15-minute interludes per section.
Stephen Montoya
Front and center at these practices is Ballet Frontier’s artistic director Chung-Lin Tseng, a well-traveled and decorated ballet dancer who is also this performance’s choreographer and writer. Beside Chung-Lin is his wife and artistic advisor, the Italian-born Enrica Tseng, who also has many years of global ballet experience. Along with nearly a dozen staff members, Ballet Frontier is making head way with the vision the Tseng’s started out with nearly 15 years ago.
Established as a non-profit dance company in 2009, Ballet Frontier is committed to bringing the ballet to as many North Texas audiences as possible during its annual performance season. Each season, Ballet Frontier includes productions of The Nutcracker, as well as classical and contemporary works in the fall and early spring, and large-scale classical works in April. This ballet troupe is also responsible for creating special performances and programs offered at many local schools in order to continue its commitment to community outreach. This upcoming performance of Romeo and Juliet is just one example.
Tucked away in a practice studio on the west side of the Ballet Center of Fort Worth, the performers in this troupe are getting some much-needed guidance from Chung-Lin who is keeping count of each dancer’s movements as they go through each section of the upcoming over two-hour performance.
“I started putting everything together for this on January 3rd,” Chung-Lin Tseng says. “From day one, from start to finish, this ballet took about four weeks to write.”
To better understand how his ideas might play out, Chung-Lin says he tries to see the practice performances from the viewpoint of an audience member as a critique of his own choreography. Besides critiquing his work, Chung-Lin says he also does his best to help sharpen the dancer’s form, so it becomes muscle memory for them the day of the performance.
“I usually let the dancers do it their own way and then somehow my vision still comes out,” he says. “Sometimes, their interpretations come out better than how I imagined it, so we go with that.”
Stephen Montoya
Playing the lead roles in this production are South African Kyle Baird as Romeo and South Carolinian Perry Meadors as Juliet. And although these two highly trained ballet dancers are center stage, they are being accompanied by many performers whose backgrounds in this art vary in skill level.
One such artist is current TCU professor of physics Magnus Rittby who inhabits the role of the Prince of Verona.
“I owe my involvement in this to my wife Kristi,” Rittby says with a smile. “She actually came to TCU to do ballet. However, in 2008 she brought in the entire family to perform, including me and I’ve never danced in my life.”
Rittby says his roles on stage started out in the background, but after some time became a bit more pronounced. “I was very uncomfortable, and it was a challenge but after four performances of The Nutcracker and various other performances, I felt a bit more at ease. But I don’t dance, that’s my wife.”
Rittby says he and his wife have been a part of Ballet Frontier from the get-go, even going as far as helping the dance company achieve non-profit status and participating on its board.
The way its sits now, is the Ballet Center of Fort Worth is the school portion of what the Tseng’s offer, with Ballet Frontier acting as its performance arm, which takes in creatives from all walks of the stage.
“This is where the kids and the parents can kind of be a part of a major production and learn how all of that process goes,” Rittby says.
In 2018 Enrica Tseng says Ballet Frontier reached out to dancers and performers outside of the troupe’s roster, to play guest roles.
“We want to make sure that everyone gets the chance to be together in like a choreographic process, because that's an amazing process to go through as a dancer,” she says. “When you actually have the writer that’s also choreographing a production for you, tailored to the group that he's working with, it’s amazing for everybody. And then everybody is in the performances and they're involved in everything that we are doing. It adds to the group’s understanding of the performance as a whole.”
This is exactly where the performers in the upcoming Romeo and Juliet ballet are coming from. And since it’s been a while since Ballet Frontier dared to tell this story in dance form, a bit of fate came in to help push the performance to the next level. Two years ago, after doing Carmen at the University of Utah, a member of the Universal Ballet asked the Tseng’s what they might work on next. “We said we would like to do a version of Romeo and Juliet,” Enrica says. “Two years later this same person asked us if we would like the costumes they used for Romeo and Juliet as a donation. That really got us excited.”
Stephen Montoya
What Enrica and staff thought would be only 100 donated costumes turned out to be 100 crates filled with costumes for several different performances.
As for the performer’s practice schedule, Enrica says, everyone meets Tuesday through Saturday, with Saturday’s practice running from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. “You need this kind of practice schedule because this is a huge ballet,” Enrica says. “There are a lot of moving parts.”
Some of those moving parts include several highly choreographed death scenes, one of which resembles a dual crucifixion. Other moving parts include many highly decorated backdrops and very colorful costumes. This along with Prokofiev’s score, should make for an epic live action and dance experience for the entire family to enjoy.
“We are super excited about this,” Enrica says. “This is a huge undertaking. We are excited to see the full version of this ballet unfold before a live audience.”
