Speechless lovers.

Byline: FRED CRAFTS The Register-Guard

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE sent the English language soaring to probe the deepest recesses of the heart and mind. But Shakespeare's plays without their expressive language are an entirely different animal, as Eugene Ballet artistic director/choreographer Toni Pimble attests.

In Pimble's Shakespeare ballets, such as her upcoming "Romeo and Juliet" (next weekend at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts), music and movement alone must convey the story.

Pimble has admired the tragic story of star-crossed lovers since she was young, but she admits that sometimes the words trip her up in adapting it to ballet.

Take the scene in Act I when Lady Capulet tells her daughter, Juliet, that the nobleman Paris has asked for her hand in marriage. The request is easily delivered through dialogue, but try doing it only through movement. What Shakespeare accomplished in a few words takes quite a bit longer in Pimble's ballet.

"The way we introduce Count Paris is we have this bedroom window that's open onto a little balcony," Pimble says by phone from her office in Boise. "We see Paris and Lord Capulet in the window discussing the marriage. Then Lady Capulet takes Juliet over to the window and gestures up to Count Paris. Then Juliet looks at Count Paris."

Pimble adds, "You have to be clever about telling the story. Obviously, you can't create everything on stage without the ballet turning into some six-hour length piece. For us, we have to find another way. You have to see the language in a different light."

Pimble says she has "shifted things around a little bit, but the basic plot stays the same."

One of the most famous sequences occurs when Romeo spies Juliet at night on her balcony, and the two of them flirt outrageously. The scene is one of the most enchanting in Shakespeare's writing. It inspired composer Serge Prokofiev to write what Pimble calls "the most beautiful music of the score."

"For that we have a little balcony that she goes up to - an inside circular staircase. Romeo appears before her, and we have this pas de deux that's very romantic. It's a very big and very difficult pas de deux," Pimble says.

"When she says (in Act I, Scene V), `Palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss' and he says, `Let lips do what hands do,' I reference that by touching hands together then following that with a kiss."

Company stalwarts Brett Mills and Hyoung Il Joung will dance the title roles on Saturday. Jennifer Martin and guest artist David Makhateli will take their turn on Oct. 13.

Makhateli danced with Eugene Ballet last season as Basilio, Kitri's lover, in Anna-Marie Homes' staging of "Don Quixote." A Russian, he is a principal dancer with Houston Ballet and has danced with both the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Dutch National Ballet.

Besides its romantic dancing, "Romeo and Juliet" is loaded with sword fighting, which is extremely difficult and dangerous on stage. Staging the fight scene is the Eugene Ballet's fightmaster, Christopher Villa, who first did the sword work when the ballet was created in 1985.

Pimble calls swordplay this ballet's "biggest challenge." To learn the moves, the dancers practice their sword work at very slow speed at first, then gradually speed it up until they can do it in real time. Even then, Pimble worries about injury.

In the opening scene, Capulets and Montagues clash in the village square. Sword fights are everywhere. Pimble describes it as "three minutes of controlled chaos."

The problem, she says, is "not only learning the technique, but for us, it's combining the sword work with dance. For instance, in the Mercutio/Tybolt fight later on in Act Two, there's still a lot of dance involved.

``Tybolt does a jump in the air in which he turns around twice. Then he comes down, and he parries - he defends himself on the cut. So the timing of that is crucial, obviously, because if they don't get the timing down, then Mercutio is coming at Tybolt, jumping in the air and getting cut."

By the time the dancers are through with this season, they will be expert at sword fighting. "Romeo and Juliet" is the first of three ballets involving swordplay.

"The Nutcracker" (Dec. 20-22) has one short fight scene, and "The Three Musketeers" (Feb. 22-23) has many of them.

Through it all, Pimble insists the swordplay be done within a dance context.

"You want it to look authentic, but at the same time, it cannot be authentic because you are always striking at the side of the body and not directly at it. Whereas when you are actually doing fencing as a contact sport, then you actually fence at the body, with armor.

"We are very careful, because we don't want anybody to get poked."

Arts reporter Fred Crafts can be reached by phone at 338-2575 and by e-mail at [e-mail].

ROMEO AND JULIET

WHAT: William Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers dance to Serge Prokofiev's score in a Eugene Ballet Company production choreographed by Toni Pimble

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Oct. 13

WHERE: Hult Center, Seventh and Willamette streets

HOW MUCH: $18 to $55, at the Hult Center box office (682-5000)

GUARDLINE: To hear Prokofiev's music, call GuardLine at 485-2000 and request category 3733.

PREVIEW: Pimble and dancers will give a free lecture/demonstration at 12:15 p.m. Thursday in the Hult Center lobby.

CAPTION(S):

Conveying the courtship with only movement, not words, was a challenge, the choreographer says.