“Love Desire,” by Hamish Bowles, was originally published in the April 2020 issue of Vogue.
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American ballet theatre s principal dancer Misty Copeland, 37, and soloist Calvin Royal III, 31, will make history this spring when they become the company s first African American partners to perform the title roles in Kenneth MacMillan s Romeo and Juliet. The new production, set to music composed by Sergei Prokofiev under challenging conditions in Soviet Russia in the 1930s (and first performed there at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1940), was initially choreographed by MacMillan at London s Royal Opera House in 1965, with lavish costume and set designs by Nicholas Georgiadis. The legendary dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn received 43 curtain calls on opening night. (Fonteyn, who at the time was in her mid-40s, had seen her career reborn by her partnership with Nureyev, nearly 20 years her junior.)
MacMillan s ballet famously requires not only technical virtuosity but nuanced acting as Juliet evolves from a giddy, childlike teenager to a young woman experiencing romantic and carnal love for the first time. “Juliet is my favorite role in my repertoire, but I first took it on without a lot of experience,” Copeland says. It is a role, she insists, that “you don t know until you are out there living it—it s impossible to prepare in the studio.” And for the dancer playing Romeo—who is onstage through much of the performance: “I used to curse MacMillan,” notes ABT s artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, a celebrated Romeo himself in the 1980s. “The role is a huge physical challenge and takes confidence because stamina is an issue. You are so tired that you have to trust your technique. Calvin s at a point of breakthrough. He s really ready for Romeo.”
“Calvin is a spiritual dancer,” says Copeland, “and I m so excited to give myself to him and not come with any preconceived ideas but to respond to the Romeo that he shows me.”
Royal has memories of being a teenager in the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at ABT and watching the ballet from the wings, waiting for his moment to help bring on the carriage for the ballroom scene. “Even back then, Romeo was a dream role that I aspired to play one day,” he says. “When I found out that Misty and I would be performing together, it just felt like one of those aha moments—all of the stars are aligning in such a beautiful way.”
Copeland, who has danced her Juliet opposite such esteemed Romeos as David Hallberg and Roberto Bolle, sees Royal following in their noble tradition. “The stereotypical idea of black male dancers is that they re oversexualized and not necessarily classical,” she says, “earthy, aggressive, erotic characters who are not equal to the ballerina. But Calvin has burst through that stereotype. He has a princelike aura and quality—elegant and ethereal.”
“There is a deep feeling to his dance,” adds McKenzie, who has closely monitored the arc of Royal s development with the company. “His reaction to music is visceral, and it imbues everything he does. You can t teach that.”
Copeland has also been following Royal since his days as a student in ABT s Summer Intensive program more than a decade ago, when she had recently been promoted to soloist (she was appointed principal dancer in 2015). “I vividly remember when I was the little bunhead from the company standing in the doorway and watching the studio company rehearse,” she recalls. “Calvin stood out immediately, and I remember pulling him aside and expressing my admiration, for his maturity and for his stunning take on this contemporary piece he was working on. With young dancers,” she continues, “and not just the black and brown, I m a listening ear if they ever need any advice—and he was never afraid to come to me for advice.”
“I just felt so connected with her and her story, and we clicked right away,” Royal remembers of meeting Copeland for the first time. “She s been someone that I can talk to about everything. And seeing how far she s gone from that first meeting, seeing how her voice is being heard far and wide, has ignited my own sense of the responsibility we hold as artists to encourage those coming up after us.”
When Copeland needed her Prince Charming for a 2016 Cinderella at the Open World Dance Foundation in Houston, with children from the local community taking the additional roles, she called on Royal. “The part that really stuck with me the most,” he recalls of this experience, “was seeing all of the kids huddled in the wings, with that twinkle in their eyes when they saw the both of us doing the grand pas de deux. It inspired me, and it just propelled me to want to keep getting better.”
The couple subsequently performed together for ABT in Alexei Ratmansky s enchanting 2018 staging of Petipa s 1900 period piece Harlequinade, dancing the secondary roles of Pierrot and Pierrette. Royal s character traditionally calls for whiteface makeup, a trope that he and Copeland successfully lobbied against. “The ballet world should be open to that dialogue,” says Copeland, who has also challenged the Bolshoi s continuing practice of using blackface for certain “exotic” roles. “What is the artistic value in black makeup, under which you can t even recognize an artist?” argued Ratmansky, the Bolshoi s former director, now artist in residence at ABT, in support on his Facebook page. “Why provoke?” As of this writing, many Russian companies, citing tradition, continue the practice.
Last year Royal was a memorable von Rothbart, the evil sorcerer to Copeland s Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, at the Metropolitan Opera House, and the couple were also featured together in the 2019 Pirelli calendar, shot by Albert Watson. “We re two dancers of color who have really put in our time and paid our dues,” says Royal. “This is the moment when we meet side by side, and I m just thrilled to be able to represent something that s going to be so much greater and will go so much further. I m envisioning the next generation of people—dancers, sponsors, supporters of the ballet—that are going to see in this the possibility of what the arts can do, and what we can do as artists.”