Watching the POB dvd of John Neumeier's Sylvia the other night it struck me that his choreography celebrates a real love of movement and the body. And he is so connected to the music. I wondered if dancers feel that when they perform his ballets.

For me Neumeier's choreography expresses beautifully and sensitively the human condition with its many, often conflicting, emotional and psychological levels.

Does anyone else feel this way? I find it interesting that on BT there really isn't much discussion of his choreography and works.

Last evening I watched Neumeier's Romeo & Juliet by The Royal Danish Ballet at Ueno, Tokyo, and I was really disappointed.

The sets were unique and silhouettes were beautiful, but his use of music was simply that of the plotless contemporary dances; the ballet was far from persuasive compared with R&J of John Cranko. Having also watched his Die Kleine Meerjungfrau, I've come up with the conclusion that Neumeier simply doesn't understand music as Ashton and MacMillan (and maybe Bintley) did. I hope somebody tells him that fine sets and bunch of "contemporary dances" wouldn't make good ballets. The right selection and correct intrepretation of music does.

After 36 years as the Artistic Director at Hamburg Ballet, I can't imagine there is a whole lot any of us good "tell" Mr. Neumeier. The man has a huge repertoire of choreography and a devoted following in Hamburg.

I'm not a great fan of Neumier's Sylvia and I haven't seen his Romeo, though I have enjoyed many of his other ballets. But I'm intrigued by Kahoyo's comment, quoted above, as it's always seemed to me that Ashton and MacMillan have a very different musicality. I would never have put them together so perhaps Kahoyo can explain further.

I haven't seen any choreography by Neumeier that I would describe as either musical or expressive. His ballets have a certain "attitude" and can give dancers a good workout, I guess, but poetic experiences they ain't. I haven't seen his Sylvia and cringe at the thought, but I'd give it a try if I could.

It's just that they knew what constituted good ballets, what moved the audience, even with diffrerent musicalities. I can at least say MacMillan's Manon, performed by the Royal Ballet in 2005 at Tokyo was fairly impressive. The girl sitting next me was shedding tears when Manon died in Act 3.

The question I want to ask is, for instance, did Ashton or MacMillan ever allow thier company to perform with recorded music, as Neumeier frequently does with his Hamburg Ballet? Does Neumeier really know the good from the bad concerning music?

For the record here is why I didn't like his R&J (performed by the Royal Danish Ballet, May 23 2009, at Tokyo):
1. Group dances of Act 1 and Act 2 were too "contemporary" (and thus became easily obsolete 38 years after the production), and their contributions to the narration of the story were almost none.
2. Neumeier altered Prokofiev's music Dance of the Knights of Act1, the most famous part of R&J, with its ending meaninglessly prolonged. He was audacious enough to challenge the Prokofiev's original score and the result was just a disaster.
3. Neumeier loves to open the stage curtain with no music at all, and did again in Act 3 of his R&J. He may claim it is based on his study of Noh, but it wasn't impressive to me. It is, after all, a denial of the role of the music.
4. (This may be a fault of Nikolaj Hübbe, the director of RDB) In Act 2, the orchestra stopped playing and the Dance of the mandolins was performed with recorded music. Hübbe might have thought that the audience of Tokyo were deaf and they would not realize such trick.
5. (also likely to be a fault of Hübbe) They dropped confetti and hand-clapped (to self-applause) in Napoli a week ago, and they did the same in Remeo and Juliets. I wonder if such procedures were commonly used in the good tradition of ballet. Once might be tolerable, but when it came twice, it just stinked.

So it looks to me as if Neumeier were attempting to become Hegel or Marx of the ballet history, and Hübbe delightfully played his role as Lenin. (Napoli was fine, though.)

When the Paris Opera Ballet brought Neumeier's "Dream" to London, I was shocked that there was such a theatrical choreographer around and simply amazed by the performance of the dancing and acting of the company. It was received with extraordinary warmth by a seasoned audience.

Yes Leonid, I remember those performances by the Paris Opera Ballet too. Wonderful dancing and thoroughly inventive choreography. But to take up Kahoyo's point, I think the barrel organ music used for the scenes with the rustics was recorded - but presumably it had to be as you can hardly tour one of those huge barrel organs.

I don't think either Ashton or MacMillan used recordings - but then they didin't have to as they worked largely within an opera house with a resident orchestra. During the war the then Sadler's Wells ballet danced to two pianos.

However, I have on occasion been at performances of Romeo and Juliet by smaller companies where the Mandolin Dance was recorded and always assumed that this was because there were no experienced mandolin players available.

Kahoyo, with regard to your final point about the dancers appearing to applaud themselves; I think you may find that the dancers were applauding the audience and that this is traditional in Denmark and some other countries. My memory is hazey and I'm sure someone on this board will correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect it was a politesse on their part. And I do remember often seeing showers of confetti at the end of Napoli, so this too is a tradition.