- April 17, 2025
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Five years is a long time. But that’s how long Sarasota Ballet principal dancer Luke Schaufuss has been waiting to perform Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
Two weeks before Schaufuss was set to play Romeo’s friend, Mercutio, in the timeless tale of the star-crossed lovers in 2020, COVID-19 put the production — and the rest of the world — on hold.
Now, Schaufuss, a third-generation dancer whose family tree is intertwined with Ashton’s “Romeo and Juliet,” finally gets to perform the full-length ballet. This time around, Schaufuss will play Romeo when the curtain goes up at the Florida premiere on March 28-29 at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.
Macarena Giminez will dance the role of Juliet. Giminez wasn’t a member of the Sarasota Ballet back in 2020. She and her husband Maximiliano Iglesias joined the company as principal dancers in 2022 from Argentina’s Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón.
With Schaufuss cast as the besotted scion of the Montague clan and Giminez playing his forbidden love from the rival Capulet family, the maxim “good things come to those who wait” certainly rings true for Sarasota audiences.
Accompanied with live music by the Sarasota Orchestra, “Romeo and Juliet” promises to remind patrons at the Van Wezel why the Bard himself wrote, “For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
In addition to elaborate costumes and props, including swords wielded by the dueling Capulets and Montagues, and ornate sets depicting Juliet’s iconic balcony and a ballroom, the full-scale production has a cast of nearly 40 dancers. Among them are international stars and company veterans returning to play character roles as well as members of the Sarasota Ballet Studio Company for younger dancers in training.
“Romeo and Juliet,” which runs more than two hours not including two intermissions, features the kind of pageantry more frequently found in opera than ballet. Here, the limbs tell the story rather than voice, but acting is required in both cases.
Even back in 2020, Sarasota Ballet Managing Director Iain Webb and Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri had firmly established their company as the guardian of British choreographer Ashton’s legacy. Both danced Ashton’s ballets earlier in their careers in London and have revived many of his productions since their arrival at the Sarasota Ballet in 2007.
But their reputation was burnished last June by the Sarasota Ballet’s triumphant London residency at the Royal Opera, where the company won rave reviews for its performances in the “Ashton Celebrated” program and shared the stage with the Royal Ballet.
Born in 1904, Ashton was first choreographer and then director of the company now known as the Royal Ballet. He is credited with creating a uniquely English style of ballet and is known for such works as “La fille mal gardée,” “Cinderella,” “Dante Sonata” and “Sinfonietta,” to name a few.
What is significant about Ashton’s dance interpretation of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” set to the music of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, is that Ashton created it in 1955 without any exposure to Russian versions of the ballet.
The reason for this lack of cultural exchange was geopolitical. The first “Romeo and Juliet” ballet was choreographed by Leonid Lavrovsky and produced in 1940 at the Kirov Theatre when Russia was an ally of Nazi Germany. After World War II, the Iron Curtain came down dividing the Soviet Union and Europe. Relations between East and West remained tense during the so-called Cold War.
“Sir Fred was the first to introduce ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to the West as a ballet,” notes Webb.
Ashton originally wanted to choreograph the ballet for the Royal Ballet, but was turned down by Dame Nanette de Valois, the godmother of British ballet and a veteran of the Ballet Russes, he says.
“Madame,” as she was always called, was concerned that Ashton’s production could jeopardize efforts to bring the first version of “Romeo and Juliet” and Russian ballet stars of the era to London. “That was why he brought the ballet to the Royal Danish Ballet,” Webb explains.
When Ashton choreographed “Romeo and Juliet,” he used Luke Schaufuss’ grandmother Mona Vangsaae, to create the role of Juliet, while his grandfather Frank Schaufuss was the seminal Mercutio, a jester-like character.
Over time, Ashton’s fairytale-like “Romeo and Juliet” was eclipsed by later versions, including John Cranko’s production for the Stuttgart Ballet and one choreographed in 1965 for the Royal Ballet by Sir Kenneth McMillan, Ashton’s successor at the company.
More athletic than Ashton’s, McMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet” was adopted by the American Ballet Theatre and became the most popular version.
When Ashton died in 1988, he bequeathed the rights to his ballets to his friends rather than forming a foundation to administer future productions. “Romeo and Juliet” was inherited by the current Romeo’s father, Danish dancer and choreographer Peter Schaufuss, who had worked with Ashton to update the ballet and stage it before he died.
The sets and costumes for this Sarasota Ballet premiere are from the Royal Danish Ballet’s revival of “Romeo and Juliet” in the 1990s. The production and its accoutrements are more than ample enough to fill the stage of the Van Wezel, considerably larger than those at the Sarasota Opera House or FSU Center for the Performing Arts, where the Sarasota Ballet also performs.
The last time Ashton’s “Romeo and Juliet” was seen in the U.S. was in 2016, when it was performed by the Los Angeles Ballet. The Sarasota Ballet’s dedication to Ashton’s repertory and the ballet’s long absence from the stage was why Webb was so keen to revive it five years ago.
When COVID restrictions were announced in March 2020, Webb and his company didn’t know how long they would last. “We thought everything would be sorted out very quickly. We didn’t think the lockdown would last very long,” Schaufuss recalls.
Luckily, the Sarasota Ballet had the foresight to videotape a rehearsal of “Romeo and Juliet,” which runs over two hours and has two intermissions, for posterity. It has proven valuable as the company prepares to stage Romeo and Juliet 2.0.
Even though the ballet is titled “Romeo and Juliet,” it is the heroine who steals the show, insists Luke Schaufuss. “This ballet really should be called ‘Juliet,’” he says. “She’s the centerpiece. It’s really about her journey.”
“So many things are happening to her during the ballet,” Giminez says of her character. “She starts out as a girl and becomes a woman. She makes decisions and she thinks everything is going to work out. But in the last two or three minutes, it’s just her world falling apart.”
Sarasota Ballet principal dancer Ricardo Graziano will play two roles —Juliet’s father, Lord Capulet, and her cousin Tybalt, who escalates the feud between the rival families by killing Mercutio.
“They’re both part of the same family so I’m rooting for the same team. I’m on Juliet’s side both times,” Graziano says.
On hand in Sarasota to coach Graziano and others in their fight scenes is French dancer Patrick Armand, who recently retired as director of the San Francisco School of Ballet.
“He (Patrick) danced Paris and Romeo and toured everywhere,” Schaufuss says. “He’s here sharing his expertise, not just in sword fighting, but all the little details.”
Returning to the stage for this production is Sarasota Ballet veteran Rita Duclos, who has been living in Europe and recently moved back to Sarasota with her family. Duclos will play Lady Capulet, Juliet’s mother.
Juliet’s nanny will be played by Deirdre Miles Burger, assistant director of education of the Sarasota Ballet. Burger often appears as a character dancer in Sarasota Ballet productions.
Schaufuss advises ticket holders to arrive at the Van Wezel with a handkerchief in their pocket or a packet of Kleenex in their handbag.
“If you see the end scene and it doesn’t move you, we’ve totally failed,” he says. “Something has gone drastically wrong.”
