The Park Record | Ballet West II Leaps Into 'Roméo et Juliette'
When Park City Opera presents Charles Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette” Friday and Sunday at the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts, audiences will get an additional performance experience on top of the singing, sword-play and storytelling.
They will get a dose of dance from members of Ballet West II, Ballet West’s pre-professional company, said Michael Waldrop, faculty and contemporary program manager at Frederick Quinney Lawson Ballet West Academy.
“There will be eight dancers,” he said. “So, while you’re getting this high-level performance of principal singers and a choir, you will get the same from the dancers.”
Before Waldrop began working with the dancers two weeks ago, he immersed himself in Goundod’s score, which is different from the Sergei Prokofiev music that is regularly associated with a “Roméo & Juliet” ballet.
“As ballet dancers, we have our own perspective of the story through the Prokofiev music stand point, but all of a sudden things change with the music and then you add opera,” he said. “You still get the same point across through singing and acting and all of those perspectives, but it’s a little different because it’s not the same music.”