(Re)Playing Shakespeare through Modern Dance: Youri Vámos’s Romeo and Juliet

This article discusses Youri Vámos’s 1997 modern-dance adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It examines the shift from Renaissance Verona to the 20th century; his choreographic architecture within physical and spatial ‘partitions’, and his contemporary-dance vocabulary, which fuses classical technique with modern gestures and movements. The lovers are interpreted by the youngest, least experienced dancers in the ensemble, while the dramatisation shifts between irony and tragedy, following a succession of intersemiotic translations of the text and stylistic reworkings. The article concludes with a study of the lovers’ pas de deux, comparing their first encounter and the ballet’s tragic conclusion.