Our trip last night to the local cinema to see a live stream from the Royal Opera House of the ballet Romeo & Juliet was sublime – a high spot of my year so far. I’m no ballet aficionado but was simply swept away by the beauty and skill of it all – the dancers, the music, the sets, the costumes – everything. And of course, it was Shakespeare. I haven’t the words to sufficiently express how wonderfully uplifting and at the same time humbling it all was.
Principal dancers Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov were magical, their dancing superb to my eyes but just as important, their ability to tell by movement and expression the great tale of love and tragedy that is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This was ballet – not Shakespeare’s mighty words – but as curtain went up to reveal a Verona street scene I could not help reciting silently to myself the wonderful first words of Shakespeare’s masterpiece: “Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean………” . And three hours later as the lovers lay dead on the stage, their families distraught and Verona’s Prince standing angry and saddened by the events in his city I remembered again the sombre final words of the play spoken by the Prince: “A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things: Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished; For never was a story of more woe, Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”.As we left the cinema and drove home along Nottingham’s Ring Road I reflected upon what we had been privileged to be part of. During the intervals, and with the power of technology, text messages appeared on the screen praising the performance and the wonder of it from people all over the world who like us were watching the live stream: Berlin, Cardiff, Croatia, the Philippines, Lille, Madrid and hundreds more – their texts running along the bottom of the screen as they poured in from cyberspace. And as I drove I marvelled at the power of technology to bring us together – the world is indeed becoming smaller. What an opportunity we have to become a better, more united world.
And, following this line of thought I mused on something else. The performance was in London, I was watching in Nottingham. Juliet was performed by a dancer born and raised in Japan and Romeo a Russian born and raised in a city in the depths of that vast country. The orchestra was conducted by Koen Kessels - a Belgian and the ballet choreographed by Sir Kenneth Macmillan – a Scot. The musical score was composed by another Russian Sergey Prokofiev – and of course the whole thing was based upon the words of an Englishman, William Shakespeare. We are, indeed, all interlinked and intertwined across world – all reliant upon everyone else’s talents, ideas, skills, resources, aspirations, dream, hopes and fears. There are words for this: “mankind” or “humanity”. We are all part of humanity whether we like it or not; and as humans, all of us who enjoyed last night’s performance – wherever we were – recognised and understood and related to the very human emotions and events that were set out before us precisely because we are human – it’s called “empathy” - it's one of the attributes that separates us from the animal kingdom.
So, as I reversed the car onto our drive late last night the inhuman, divisive, hateful racist and ethnic rhetoric that we have heard from the American President and his henchmen in recent weeks seemed even more unacceptable. The awful dismissal of empathy as a valid human emotion by Elon Musk a week or two ago says far more about him and his crippled perverted view of humanity than it does about empathy. Musk's comment that "Empathy is the fundamental weakness of western civilisation" not only displays his ignorance of a basic human instinct, it calls in to question his understanding of people and the defining qualities in a "civilisation". But Musk is not alone. Equally depressing and damning is the ill considered, vulgar, crude and violent outbursts from the mindless supporters of these would be tyrants. The actions, too, of alleged “strong men” like Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin (no they’re not "strongmen", they are childish thugs who have mistakenly been given, by their mindless supporters, expensive and dangerous toys to play their perverted games with) and their inhumane bombing into oblivion of innocents becomes to me even more of a crime against humanity.
Romeo and Juliet is a story about love being thwarted and it becomes a tragedy. It seems to me that in this hate filled world we need to ensure love and togetherness are victorious. The alternative as we see daily on our TV screens and in our newspapers doesn’t bear thinking about. It's commonly said - and I believe to be true - that Shakespeare's works encompass all it is to be human - all mankind's dreams, failings, misdeeds and triumphs can be found in the Bard's works. Last night's ballet of his mighty tale took that one stage further and brought a beauty and magic to it all - and in doing so showed up the horror of what is happening and being promoted by so many in our modern world.
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