Few texts in the history of theater have been interpreted as frequently, and in as many forms, as William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. In Saburo Teshigawara’s version, presented at the Craiova International Shakespeare Festival, the familiar tragedy is stripped of almost everything that traditionally defines it. There are no elaborate sets, no spoken exchanges, no balcony scene in the usual sense, and no direct narration of the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. Instead, Teshigawara approaches the play through contemporary dance, reducing it to an almost abstract meditation on love, death, fate, and the human desire to overcome what cannot ultimately be escaped.
Romeo and Juliet is playing at the Craiova International Shakespeare Fesival
Teshigawara, who directs, choreographs, designs the costumes and lighting, and creates the sound collage, also performs the role of Romeo. Opposite him is Rihoko Sato as Juliet, his longtime artistic collaborator and dance partner. Their collaboration goes back decades, since Sato joined KARAS in 1996, the company Teshigawara founded in 1985 with Kei Miyata. Since then, KARAS has become the vehicle for his distinct choreographic language, while his Tokyo space KARAS APPARATUS, opened in 2013, has functioned as a laboratory for workshops, exhibitions, performances, and his ongoing “Update Dance” series.
The synopsis here is both simple and difficult. Inspired by Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, “Romeo and Juliet” follows less the narrative details of the young lovers than the emotional and existential forces that define them. A man and a woman appear in a sparse, essentially empty space, drawn toward and away from each other through movement. Their bodies suggest attraction, hesitation, resistance, tenderness, violence, surrender, and separation. The result is not a retelling in conventional terms, but an attempt to reach the roots of the play: love as a force that destabilizes the body, death as an unavoidable destination, and fate as something humans fight even when they know they cannot defeat it.
This approach makes the production fascinating, but also demanding. Interpreting Shakespeare through dance is never easy, particularly when the language disappears entirely. The viewer is essentially expected to know the basic story beforehand, because Teshigawara does not offer an accessible narrative map. Those looking for the dramatic progression of the original play may struggle, since the production is more concerned with essence than plot. At the same time, this is also where its boldness lies. Teshigawara does not attempt to modernize Shakespeare through updated dialogue or visual gimmicks. He moves in the opposite direction, removing dialogue, social detail, and theatrical decoration in order to ask what remains when only the bodies of Romeo and Juliet are left on stage.
The answer is movement, and movement becomes the main language of the production. Teshigawara’s Romeo appears intense and powerful, his gestures often abrupt and cutting, almost as if his body is chopping through the air. Sato’s Juliet, by contrast, seems softer, more mellow, and more fluid, her movements flowing through the space with a different kind of energy. The contrast between them is central to the piece. He seems to attack space; she seems to dissolve into it. He carries a sharp, forceful presence, while she often gives the impression of something lighter, more elusive, and more emotionally liquid. Their dynamic is not built through words, but through rhythm, distance, interruption, and physical tension.
This also connects with Teshigawara’s broader choreographic interest in the body as something shaped by air, breath, and emptiness. The stage rarely feels full, yet it is never inactive. The absence of scenery becomes a field in which every shift of the body matters. Sometimes the two performers seem to occupy the same emotional space despite being apart, while at other moments proximity creates not intimacy, but danger. The tragedy is therefore not explained; it is suggested through the impossibility of stable contact.
Visually, the production is minimal, almost to the point of non-existence in terms of set design. This sparseness places even greater emphasis on lighting, which becomes one of the defining technical elements. Different frames and shapes of light appear on the stage, moving around it and constantly reorganizing the performers’ relation to space. At times, Romeo and Juliet stand inside these frames, as if trapped by them. At other moments, they remain outside, seeming to resist the structures imposed upon them. The shifting light works almost like fate made visible, creating boundaries, openings, separations, and temporary shelters.
The costumes follow the same restrained logic. Teshigawara’s Romeo is dressed in everyday clothes, making him appear grounded, almost ordinary, despite the intensity of his performance. Sato’s Juliet wears a white dress, more intricate but still simple, which gives her presence a fragile, luminous quality. The contrast is effective without becoming overdesigned, reflecting the production’s wider refusal of decoration.
The sound collage, also by Teshigawara, includes music by J.S. Bach, Richard Strauss, and Dmitri Shostakovich, including Bach’s Piano Concerto in A major BWV 1055, Strauss’s “Morgen!” Op. 27, No. 4, and Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 2 in F major for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 102. Rather than using a traditional ballet score, the production allows these musical selections to create emotional waves around the dancers. The music does not narrate the story directly, but deepens the atmosphere of longing, melancholy, and inevitability.
In the end, Saburo Teshigawara’s “Romeo and Juliet” is less about the lovers of Verona than about the forces that make their story eternal. Love, death, youth, fragility, resistance, and fate are all present, not as dialogue, but as breath, light, motion, and stillness. It may not satisfy everyone, particularly those unfamiliar with the original play, but as an avant-garde dance interpretation, it offers a stark and memorable encounter with Shakespeare through the body.
