Innovative Russian Lyricism in ‘Romeo and Juliet’

Most ballets set to Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” retell the events of Shakespeare’s play in a literal, ponderous style based on the narrative conventions of such full-evening 19th century classics as “Giselle” and “Swan Lake.” Not the audacious Nikolai Boyarchikov version danced by the Perm State Ballet (Russia’s third-largest ballet company) at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza on Wednesday.

Like the score, Boyarchikov’s 1972 choreography belongs wholly to the 20th century, and in its best moments it might be called “Star-Crossed Variations,” for it spends less time working through the familiar plot than using it to launch extended classical meditations on the characters’ emotions.

The result is a shock: no pseudo-operatic verismo or scenic clutter. No dancing whores in the marketplace scene. No balcony in the balcony scene, no bed in the bedroom scene, no tomb in the tomb scene. Instead, designer Alla Kozhenkova frames the action with gauzy Renaissance arches and uses different central panels to suggest specific locales. The stage stays wide open for dancing.

At the beginning, end and at every major juncture of the love story, Boyarchikov deploys five couples in gleaming white--embodiments of love’s young dream, perhaps, and certainly of sublime Russian lyricism. You have never seen longer limbs or necks in your life and their purity of style as they circle the lovers and embroider their dancing is one of Boyarchikov’s most successful achievements.

In what’s usually a mime-dominated scene in which Juliet gets a sleeping potion from Friar Laurence, the narrative becomes suspended for a bold, feverish and very Russian fantasia involving Juliet’s visions of Romeo, Lord Capulet, Paris, Tybalt and Mercutio along with flowers that become major symbols of life and death. You have to like dancing to accept Boyarchikov’s innovations; he’s always working to get inside the story choreographically.

There are also plenty of lapses: an overload of happy peasants in poster colors, occasional descents into conventional balletic melodrama, inconsistencies in how characters die. Mercutio (the touchingly boyish Nikolai Vyuzhanin), for instance, simply walks away from life, while a few moments later, Tybalt (the impressively forceful Radiy Miniakhmetov) collapses and plays dead.

The house program inflicts abundant injuries on Shakespeare (“Friar Laureate”) but is especially remiss in not telling the audience who’s cast in the key roles. Natalia Moiseeva of the perfect placement, spectacular jump and impossibly high, easy extension hardly deserves to remain anonymous as Juliet.

Although she does not explore character growth so much as exude a fragile sweetness that becomes shattered long before the final scene, Moiseeva dances up to the highest international standard in the role.

As Romeo, Vitaly Poleschuk partners her ardently but brings nothing special to the role technically or dramatically. Roman Geer makes a stronger impression as Paris, and the Capulet parents (Igor Shesterikov and Irina Kozyntseva) are very strongly cast.

Everybody dances in this “Romeo and Juliet,” including the Montagues and, unfortunately, the Nurse (Elena Morozova), a different kind of caricature than usual but a caricature nonetheless.

Attempts to choreograph Shakespearean abstractions inevitably depend on what you throw away as much as what you invent. Boyarchikov was still in his 30s when he created this rebuke to Socialist Realism and he arguably threw away too little. But the quality of his invention makes it superior to the better known Yuri Grigorovich abstract “Romeo and Juliet” for the Bolshoi seven years later.

Apart from unreliable brass, the playing of the company orchestra under Valery Platonov sustains urgency through every formalist foray into Shakespearean dance-poetry. In its second visit to the Southland, the Perm State Ballet has brought us something truly original and surprising.

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The Perm State Ballet dances “Romeo and Juliet” tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2 p.m. Also the full-

length “Cinderella,” Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. $37-$47. (562) 916-8500.