Restyling romance

Though he is best known for his pioneering theatre work with Cheek By Jowl and beyond, acclaimed director Declan Donnellan is no dance virgin. 'At the age of nine, I won a medal for Irish dancing at Roscommon Fair,' he declares proudly.

Perhaps he's not the obvious choice to spark a revolution at the legendary Bolshoi Ballet company. Yet Donnellan is behind its daring new production of Romeo And Juliet, which ditches the pointe shoes and strips the action back to basics.

At first sight it's an unlikely pairing: the avant-garde theatre man teamed up with a ballet company hitherto resistant to experimentation. But Donnellan is an avowed Russophile who has put on eight plays in Moscow and even had his own Declan Donnellan Festival there.

He says: 'It was great, if slightly bizarre, like a marathon wedding. Only in Moscow could that happen. It's because they're truly serious about theatre.'

Such has been his success that it was the Bolshoi who came knocking at his door. 'They asked me to do an opera with them. I said no but I would love to do a ballet. It didn't occur to me that they would say yes.'

He chose Romeo And Juliet for a variety of reasons, not least because seeing Kenneth MacMillan's version at Covent Garden when he was 16 was a seminal moment in his decision to pursue a life in the theatre. But there's also the power of the story. 'The balcony scene is our most potent image of romantic love,' he says.

In Donnellan's innovative version, created with partner and designer Nick Ormerod, the ingenious twist is that the balcony takes human form, a symbol of the physical forces dividing the young lovers.

It's just one element of a radical reworking of a classical ballet warhorse that confounds preconceived notions of the Bolshoi. And though the company's London season is still packed with the classics, new artistic director Alexei Ratmansky has ushered in a wind of change.

'In the life of any company there has to come a time for change. Everyone at the Bolshoi was right behind that,' says Donnellan. 'I'd love to say there were ancient ballerinas throwing up their hands in horror, but it really wasn't like that. Everyone was very positive.'

Not only that, but the Moscow critics were unanimously rapturous, no doubt relieved to find that the Bolshoi is, after all, in the business of reinventing itself. What Donnellan sets out to do is to tap into the energy and talent of performers too often masked by an over-emphasis on sheer technique.