Forgot where I saw this news item but it sounds very promising. Apart from the general idea of a Romeo with a male lover being cool, the fact that its going to come from Matthew Bourne makes it all that more exciting.
How many people here have seen his version of Swan Lake with male swans, on film, or if they were really lucky, in read life? I saw the film (the BCL has a copy, I think) and it was quite amazing. The swans, men with bare torsos and feathered leggings, were really hot and the main swan, danced by Adam Cooper, was just incredibly sexy. More than just the hunk factor though the way the story of the ballet was worked out to suit the male swans idea was fascinating (lots of swipes at British royalty) and by the time you came to the main duet between the prince and the swan the idea of it being done between two men had stopped seeming like a gimmick, but something quite natural and exciting within the storyline - as well as being amazingly hot. I wonder if a film like this could be shown at our film screenings. Our screenings happen so rarely (next is on April 1st) and there's always so much good stuff to show that we tend to stick to more conventional films. Would people sit through over an hour and a half of ballet, no words, just dance and music, but with hot guys? Vikram Gay Romeo ballet gives Juliet kiss-off Steven Swinford ALAS, poor Juliet. Matthew Bourne, Britain's most successful choreographer, is to give Romeo a male lover in a gay version of the romantic tragedy. Bourne, whose all-male Swan Lake has enthralled audiences for more than a decade, is again using an all-male cast for Romeo, Romeo his version of Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, based on the Shakespeare play. For Bourne, 47, the challenge is to portray a convincing gay relationship in dance. He said last week: "It's more to do with dancing than with sexuality. A male dancer, whether he's gay or straight, fits into a relationship with a female partner very happily. "Getting away from that, making a convincing love duet, a romantic, sexual duet, for two men that is comfortable to do and comfortable to watch I don't know if you can. I've never seen it done." Bourne's Swan Lake, in which all the swans and cygnets are male, was first staged at Sadler's Wells theatre in London in 1995, and became the longest-running ballet in London's West End and on Broadway. But although it was critically celebrated, Bourne has long had concerns that it was short of being a true homosexual work of art, since many of the performers were not playing people. He said: "I have a way of approaching it so as to make it I hate to say `acceptable', it's a terrible thing to say but so that people don't run screaming from the theatre. I let them find their own way with it, take it as far as they want in their own heads." While a gay interpretation of Romeo and Juliet has the potential to be more provocative, critics have often pointed to homosexual undertones in Shakespeare's work. Many of his sonnets were addressed to a young man, and there has also been speculation about the sexuality of the lead male characters in Romeo and Juliet, particularly Mercutio, Romeo's best friend, and Benvolio, his cousin. Bourne plans to improvise movements and scenes for Romeo, Romeo with small groups of dancers later this summer. If successful, rehearsals with the whole company could begin next year. Since West Side Story translated Romeo and Juliet to the gang warfare of 1950s New York City, the play has often been reinterpreted. In 1996, Baz Luhrmann, the director, cast Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the title roles, retaining the poetry, but updating the story to replace rapiers with pistols.
