eris

I'm back with another series (hopefully!) - I've cheated a bit by using a picture of Lola instead of Elle but how could I not when her Italian pas de chat is this gorgeous.

What makes Juliet such a fascinating role, and ultimately what made me decide it for Elle, is how her ending is foreshadowed throughout the choreography. In Macmillan's version (and likely others, though I am less familiar with those) steps of choreography from she and Romeo's bedroom pas de deux are later repeated in the final pas de deux, in which Romeo dances with Juliet's limp body, believing her to be dead. From the moment her story begins, there is no other way for it to end. She can run as she likes from it, but it finds her in the end.

- O happy dagger! This thy sheath. There rust and let me die -

Juliet does not die for a lack of love like some of ballet's other heroines (Giselle) but rather because of love. She is readily given the love which she comes to desire - taken by it with such force that it consumes her. For the short time which she possesses that which she desired most, it becomes what she lives by - when faced with its loss, she does not know how to continue her life without it. As with many stories, the Juliet who begins the ballet is not the Juliet who ends it; she has lost who she once was somewhere along the way, changed by the events which follow both her own and others actions.