Romeo and Juliet are having a moment. She looks drawn and frail, falling in love against all odds. He, on the other hand, rolls his eyes and waggles his eyebrows. She embodies anguished ardour, he sends it up rotten. She’s tragedy, he’s comedy, but any tension melts away as he puckers up for a kiss, like an irresistible puppy, and she sighs, smiles and pats him on the head.
The Romeo and Juliet in this Waterloo rehearsal room are the sensational young Russian dancers Ivan Vasiliev and Natalia Osipova. Theirs is an unlikely story — two unheralded youngsters who were promoted through the Bolshoi Ballet in the teeth of company opposition and who have emerged as the most dazzling dance partnership of their generation. Their stage chemistry bred rumours of romance and they have now announced marriage plans. What better engagement party than dancing Romeo and Juliet in London? As Osipova confirms after rehearsal, the ballet is “an incredible history of love”.
The incredible is where they are most at home. Osipova can spin like a superhero, and Vasiliev’s propulsive feats make audiences gasp. I still remember hugging myself with the delirious, jaw-dropping implausibility of their Don Quixote when the Bolshoi visited London in 2007. Both ricocheted around the stage as if gravity were an inconvenience. At only 17, Vasiliev seemed able to speed up time or slow it altogether — it looked as if he could sit around in midair before soaring off into the wings. This, my friends, was in-flight entertainment.
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The incredible is where they are most at home. Osipova can spin like a superhero, and Vasiliev’s propulsive feats make audiences gasp
Even in his baggy rehearsal sweats, Vasiliev, now 22, is on elastic form today. He’s short and has bulked up since that first London visit, muscles straining against a raspberry T-shirt, but his sheer gusto for performance is undimmed. One critic called him “Rocket Man”, and the name has stuck. His dark eyes shine, his mop of curls is springy. Every ounce is bounce. Our photographer asks Vasiliev to do a few jumps for the camera. He shrugs, mock plaintive: “I must jump?” He limbers up with a couple of hefty high kicks, like a prop forward performing the cancan. Then, with no run-up or apparent effort, he hurls himself into the air. He achieves incredible propulsion — I’ve seen it on stage, but it’s even more astonishing from just feet away. He hangs in the air with legs darting to the sides or insouciantly cocked.
Everyone in the room applauds, but for him it’s no big deal. On his next jump, he even throws in an upside-down spin and lands with tongue sticking out like a gargoyle. All gifted dancers make the impossible appear easy — for Vasiliev, it seems, it really is that simple. When I ask what he’s thinking while airborne, he says: “In two seconds, I have thoughts about everything — about how I look on stage, or I see someone in the corps de ballet and think, ‘Be careful.’ For me, it’s normal. It’s like sitting or running.”
Was the child Vasiliev this bouncy? “Actually, no,” he replies. “When I was a boy, I didn’t have an incredibly big jump. I didn’t think about it. When I came to the Bolshoi, I thought my best piece is the pirouettes. I do many pirouettes — 10, 11, 21. I do 21 pirouettes one time in my life. I’m so happy! Then I try jumping, and everyone says it’s so good.” He moans, self-mockingly. “But my pirouettes!”
When I ask Alexei Ratmansky, a former director of the Bolshoi Ballet, what attracted him to the youngsters, he mentions not their technical pyrotechnics, but their dauntless high spirits. “They’re very alive, both of them. Their eyes are bright, they sparkle.” The velvet weight of tradition, he explains, can douse the gleam of some Russian dancers. Not so these two: “They were doing things against the rules.” He recalls Vasiliev’s audition piece, a strange contemporary routine in which he collapsed and rolled around the floor. “He was not afraid of looking ugly. He was not afraid of doing anything.”
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The Bolshoi hierarchy initially looked askance at Vasiliev. “Everybody asked, ‘Who is he, why has he come?’” he says. Ratmansky confirms that “people were really against Ivan joining”. Born in Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east, he didn’t come through the company’s Moscow academy, and neither he nor Osipova, 25, fitted the grand, even haughty, Bolshoi mode. But they perfectly suited Ratmansky’s mission to invigorate the company. He says the Bolshoi also considered the superflexible Osipova more gymnast than ballerina. She and Vasiliev first danced together in Don Quixote, and her partner recalls her acute nerves beforehand: “Then she comes to the stage, does first jump, and everyone thinks, ‘Wow! Now she is flying.’”
The couple have leapt over their rivals to emerge as the Bolshoi’s biggest draw. International companies are gagging for them — fresh from guesting with American Ballet Theatre in New York, they arrive in London for the whirlwind engagement of Romeo and Juliet.
Don’t expect the epic Bolshoi production or Kenneth MacMillan’s searing Royal Ballet classic (which recently lured new audiences to the O2). Instead, the Peter Schaufuss Ballet presents Frederick Ashton’s version, created for Copenhagen in 1955. For Schaufuss, this revival is a nostalgia trip — his mother was Ashton’s first Juliet and his father unsuccessfully campaigned to play Romeo, but was cast as Mercutio. Although Prokofiev’s lyrical and tormented score is at its heart, it is far more intimate than the productions we usually see — with its small cast, it’s less a tragic pageant, more a knot of tender relationships. And, though it lacks the bravura of some versions, Schaufuss insists it’s deceptively tricky.
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The intricate steps are complex, Vasiliev confirms, but Ashton’s intimacy is the draw for him. “It’s very emotional, a dramatic ballet with hard dance — a good mix. It’s like acting for the camera, small but dramatic.” With so much focus on the characters, he insists, it has to feel real. “It’s interesting for me and Natalia because it’s something new. It’s good for us as artists, because artists must go up.”
Even as he affirms his commitment to Romeo, a mischievous gleam is never far away — Vasiliev’s default mode is larky. In rehearsal, as the coach describes what happens after Romeo’s solo, Vasiliev interjects that he has forgotten something: “Big applause.” Yes, the coach sighs indulgently, big applause. Later, when we’re crammed around a small cafe table with Schaufuss and his publicist, Vasiliev plays up shamelessly to an audience. He suggests replacing Romeo’s swordplay with a curt gunfight — “like Indiana Jones”. Oh, and he wants to dance the swan in Swan Lake — though, actually, he’d rather be a big duck. “Come on!” He’s chortling happily until Osipova remarks tartly that he isn’t a duck, he’s a bear.
For all the clowning, Vasiliev knuckles down when he needs to. For the title role in Spartacus, seen in London last summer, he trained for a year, beefing up, channelling the character of slave turned hero. Tackling Romeo in just three weeks should seem daunting by comparison, but Osipova explains that they are becoming used to throwing themselves at new roles. “Sometimes we have to learn a ballet in five days. It’s not good every time, but sometimes it is, because of the adrenaline. We’re only interested in hard work. If it’s easy, it’s not interesting.”
Vasiliev’s default mode is larky, a mischievous grin is never far away. He suggests replacing Romeo’s swordplay with a gunfight
Who could imagine that Vasiliev’s audience-boggling leaps and spins could become routine? “Of course we love jumps, and pirouettes, but, for me and Natalia, it’s not important. In the first place, it’s the emotion, it’s the dramatic roles.” Osipova is a searing actor — her stubborn, heartsick Giselle is outstanding. And Vasiliev has diligently added shade to his roles as the tormented puppet Petrushka or the doomed artist in Le Jeune Homme et la Mort.
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He’s delighted that London can track his broadening emotional palette. “I can do double tours, triple sauts de basque, it’s no trouble for me.” He’s casually referring to giddy feats that to any other dancer represent a Himalayan achievement; his triple-spinning jumps are unmatched. But as Romeo, he says, “I can work here”, pointing vehemently to his heart. He’s been stalking the role for a while.
“Three years ago, I think about Romeo, and I think, ‘Not yet. I’m not Romeo.’ But now I understand him, I feel him. Technique is work — you go to the studio and work and work — but what you feel is more important.”
In Romeo and Juliet, feeling inevitably colours the ballet. “I want proper kissing, not a stage kiss,” Schaufuss insists. Does it help the couple to dance together? “When we’re together on stage, it’s easy,” Osipova says. “We understand each other.”
Vasiliev confirms that if they have a small problem, they can “fight a little bit more”. Their tone in rehearsal sounds sharp with familiarity. They’re not exactly lovey-dovey, but keep up a continual murmur and disappear for a smoke together the first chance they get.
It’s clear that Vasiliev would much rather be talking with his partner. When I ask a question, he obligingly translates it into Russian for her, then relays her answer. Soon, they’re just chatting: she’ll say something with a sarcastic tang, he’ll grin, tweak her nose and reluctantly return to the interview. I feel like I’m intruding.
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News of their engagement has caused a flurry among ballet fans, but how does it play in Moscow? Has there been much attention? He scoffs. “Nobody in Moscow cares. Only our friends and parents. Why? Because it’s Moscow, it’s Russia. When somebody is happy, it’s not good.” He demonstrates an exaggerated huff of envy at another’s good fortune. While Moscow huffs, London can break out the smiles. Vasiliev is coming.
Romeo and Juliet is at the Coliseum, WC2, from July 11