The Ballet Premiere of Radio and Juliet with Music by Radiohead Is Approaching

30 July 2020, 1:00
The Ballet Premiere of Radio and Juliet with Music by Radiohead Is Approaching

The last premiere of the ballet season will be a performance entitled Radio and Juliet written by Edward Clug, a renowned European choreographer. The ballet with the subtitle "What would happen if Julie decided not to die" is accompanied by music of the UK band Radiohead.

Radio and Juliet  is a neoclassical ballet created in 2005 for the ballet ensemble of the Slovenian National Theatre in Maribor and is one of the most successful choreographies by the young artist Edward Clug, who has also had a great track record as a performer. His work is currently sought-after  not only in Europe, where he collaborates with such ensembles as the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, the State Ballet in Vienna, NDT 1 and 2 in The Hague or with ballets in Dortmund, Essen and Lisbon, but is also presented through his performances  at dance festivals all around the world.

Radio and Juliet  combines dance telling the most famous love story with music by the band Radiohead. In this sense, the name Radio and Juliet  is a pun. Radiohead dealt with this Shakespearean tragedy in one of their film songs in the soundtrack to a film by Baz Luhrmann, starring Leonardo di Caprio and Claire Danes in the title roles. Romeo and Juliet talks about eternal motifs that appear throughout human history: love, hate, death, intolerance, hope and violence. This timeless story has undergone numerous modifications over the centuries and has been revived in a lot of artistic genres. In addition to Baz Luhrmann, many other directors transferred this story to the screen; Sergei Prokofiev turned it into a ballet; Charles Gounod, Vincenzo Bellini and Frederick Delius created their operas based on it; Tchaikovsky converted it into a concert overture, and Leonard Bernstein eventually re-wrote this story as a musical. In each of these forms, it has become an immortal story that can take place at any time, in many different forms, without losing its meaning, in any period and social context, and therefore in the present as well. The premiere is announced to take place on 8 August  2020 from 8:00 PM at the Mahen Theatre.

Radio and Juliet  is interpreting Shakespeare's play from a slightly different angle. As Edward Clug also explains: “It can be said  that our performance begins when Juliet sees Romeo dead lying beside her. Just to express myself more precisely, we are actually processing  the story backwards, almost as a retrospective of some unfulfilled love. However, all the characters and situations in our production are fictitious, and any resemblance to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is purely... intentional, rather than accidental. You could say that this version is somewhat twisted… My intention was not to retell the story, but to offer the audience an experience from a different perspective."

Photo by Arthur Abram

Comments

Reply

No comment added yet..

This year's first concert by the Brno Contemporary Orchestra from the Auscultation series was entitled Gastro (Cuisine), or Dinner for Magdalena Dobromila Rettig (1785-1845). On Sunday, 2 February, the orchestra performed two compositions, or rather performances and happenings by Ondřej Adámek (*1979), who also conducted the pieces, in the dining room of the Masaryk Student House. This was a fairly unusual situation for the audience, when conductor Pavel Šnajdr did not take his place at the head of the orchestra.  more

The fourth concert in the Brno Philharmonic's Philharmonic at Home subscription series, subtitled Metamorphoses and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, was dedicated to works by Joseph Haydn, Antonín Rejcha and Richard Strauss. Pianist Ivan Ilić was originally scheduled to appear as soloist in Rejcha's Piano Concerto, but for health reasons he cancelled the concert. Jan Bartoš promptly took over, enabling the audience to hear the original programme on Thursday 30 January at the Besední dům.  more

The Brno Philharmonic's New Year's concert on 1 January at the Janáček Theatre is already a well-established tradition. This year was no exception, and the orchestra, led by conductor Michel Tabachnik, gave a performance consisting mainly of works by Johann Strauss the Younger. This was the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra's show opening the 'Strauss Year'. After all, 2025 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the composer, dubbed the king of waltzes. Strauss's compositions were accompanied by works by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Richard Strauss and Dimitri Shostakovich.  more

"Culture is a Bridge" was the theme of the second Czech-Austrian Partnership Concert, held on Friday, 20 December at Schloss Thalheim. It was the final evening of the 5th year of the pan-European project Czech Dreams 2024, and also part of the celebrations of the Year of Czech Music and the Concentus Moraviae international music festival. Culture is a bridge that connects not only different generations and social classes, but also entire nations. And the Czech Dreams project, which in 2024 alone presented music by Czech composers in 25 European cities in 17 different countries, is an eloquent example of this. In December alone, besides the final concert in Austria, six more concerts were performed in southern Europe, from Amarante in Portugal to Varaždin in Croatia. The concert was dedicated to the Lower Austrian Governor Erwin Pröll, who has long been committed to building and deepening relations between the Czech Republic and Austria.  more

Christmas in Brno also means the traditional pre-Christmas concert of the Brno Contemporary Orchestra (BCO), this time entitled From America to Tuřany. It took place on 18th December and after a one-year break it returned to the Sokol Hall in Tuřany. The BCO, conducted by Pavel Šnajdr, performed works by Mauricio Kagel, Steve Reich, Trevor Grahl and, as always, Miloslav Kabeláč. Appearing together with the orchestra were four singers, Aneta Podracká BendováKornél MikeczMichal Kuča and Martin Kotulan. At the end of the first half, Pavel Šnajdr set aside his baton and clapped the beat, joined by Petr Hladíkmore