Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou? The answer might surprise you, with Trajal Harrell’s dance work The Romeo, which takes inspiration from Shakespeare’s young lover and star of tragedy Romeo and Juliet, from which is crafted a dance for people of all origins, genders, and generations, of all temperaments and moods, dance when they face their tragedies and only dance.

Making its Singapore premiere this May at the 2024 Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), The Romeo takes Trajal’s artistry to new heights, as he continues to explore themes and definitions of identity and self-expression. The Romeo imagines a speculative style of dancing inspired by the primal impulse behind the desire to dance, one that transcends origin for anyone and everyone to partake in, as we watch its dozen dancers, each one a protagonist in their own right, as they perform court dance, voguing pose, or pastoral dance, a Romeo that contains multitudes and who has lived a thousand lives.

Speaking to Trajal, we found out more about the rather unusual name of the work, and the concept behind it as well. “The Romeo considers the people in the room at the moment, and whether they are universal. Its title stems from wanting to have some kind of resonance, with no need to translate it across various cultures, and also holds some kind of reverence, a name that is being handed down from generation to generation, and evokes the senses,” says Trajal. “To be frank, I wanted to play with the canon of Western literature, responding to it while making references to theatre history, and give it life beyond its Shakespearean origins.”

Born and raised in Georgia, Trajal’s unusual name stems from his godmother naming him after the Roman emperor Trajan, while he also holds yet another Roman reference in his middle name Aurelius – perhaps the idea of ‘Romeo’ being inherently linked to Rome and his own identity isn’t quite so far-fetched after all. “My first stage was being at the gym when I was an 8-year old kid doing gymnastics. But at that gym, there would also be a girl’s ballet class, and three times a week, I’d sit in the corner and watch them dance. No one said anything to me, and no one ever said anything to my grandfather, who I told to come pick me up an hour later,” says Trajal. “The point is, I was so fascinated by how dance had all these abstract shapes and sense of ritual, and for me, that was my initial foray into the dance world.”

“But something else that influenced my art was when I made a performance for “History Day” competitions in school, and that made me want to create work that always incorporated history of some kind into it,” he adds. “In college, I read up about feminist theory and feminist literature, with works like Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Woman, Native, Other exposing me to ideas of postcolonialism and other critical studies, and then discovering modern dance through Martha Graham and Isadora Duncan, and it’s only led me to more genres and styles, from postmodern to vogueing to butoh, and theatrical forms like ancient Greek theatre.”

These are all huge starting points, and while Trajal has explored them in various forms over the years, it is the ambitious The Romeo that coalesces them all in a single production. “When I was invited to create The Romeo, I knew I had to make an important statement about who I was as a choreographer and where I felt dance could be at the moment,” he explains. “I knew I was chosen because of my past works, and there was both pressure and honour and excitement to finally bring all these elements together, not so heavy that it would bear all of my history, but to create something brand new and write a new history, as it takes shape in the room, in the contemporary moment of the now.”

“I knew it was a very hard dance, but I believed in it, and wanted my dancers to feel it belonged to them as well, where it was an opportunity to have a moment in theatrical history to redefine the idea of the dance,” says Trajal. “It was a tall order, but I knew I could do it, even when people would question what I was doing. There were a lot of expectations, especially with so many group movements, all struggling to find their own individuality and shine while still remaining united as a group. So a lot of it came back to finding and recognising an aspect of yourself and your own culture and history within the choreography, and finding affirmation from that.”

How then did Trajal help his dancers find the light and learn to love The Romeo? “A large part of making this dance really was the journey and the process of creation. I know I’m not the kind of choreographer who immediately has a clear idea of what the end product will be, and I try to adopt different lenses, and start my processes in my own body before putting it out there, trying to find a way to resonate with audiences’ heartstrings,” says Trajal. “Your dancers may not like the piece, but it always becomes more efficient if they derive pleasure from it and understand it. The problem is that my dances aren’t completed by me and my dancers alone, but require an audience to finish the process – only after the first night was there really a breakthrough where everyone could sense this emotion in the audience, this feeling of togetherness that we finally felt like we were all in it, and it all just clicked.”

What Trajal then grounded the work in was the concept of ‘realness’, derived from the ballroom and vogue scene, which refers to how close one can get to being something and passing for it. “We wanted to embody and make these historical dances that have moved through culture, but present them as a total fictional version of themselves – there are aspects and elements of the actual dance, but not entirely, recreating it for ourselves,” says Trajal. “In a way, it’s a big laugh we’re all having together, this idea of aping these classic forms like Greek theatre, and it all comes together to occupy this space between fiction, imagination and history.”

Even Trajal’s music choices end up somewhat eclectic, ranging from classical piano pieces, to more jazz and operatic music. “I wanted to use such classical Western music to link the dance to a historical frame, and situate it there while subverting these dance forms,” says Trajal. “People like to say that my work changed dance history, broke the rules and carved out a space that was not there before, but really, it’s not about breaking the frame – it’s about playing with it, it’s about bringing people into that frame, and retelling history as one that we make together, based on ingredients we’ve chosen and collaborated on, so that we can take ownership of it.”

“From my perspective, I do feel that dance has the ability to go beyond what is said, and I do believe that the voices that need to be heard are those that are undervalued, and invisible in society. In my own practice, I’m trying to see how I can do things to help give them shape and form, and in The Romeo, we play more a lot with the idea of visibility, such as making visible something that we all feel or know, and putting that onstage,” adds Trajal, on the concept of dance giving a voice to those who have none. “It’s meant to then invoke a sense of belonging, to play with the vulnerability of history, and how it could now belong to all of us. It’s about adopting an inclusive lens, to bring more things into the ongoing conversation, and how we as performers can help you activate your imagination to make that possible.”

“I do have my suspicions about the concept of ‘universality’ – I can’t speak for everyone in the universe or even the world, but at the very least, these fictions that we’re trying to create each night in the room, with every performance, there’s something very special about it, where I think the act of watching theatre itself is watching history unfold,” concludes Trajal. “Theatre is a challenge to ensure the audience and performer are on the same page, and to do that, we have to rely on our collective imagination, and in my case, historical imagination that moves through cultures, knowledge, and backgrounds, and saying that it’s ok to play with that.”

Photo Credit: Orpheus Emirzas (Featured Image), Dajana Lothert

The Romeo plays from 18th to 19th May 2024 at Victoria Theatre as part of Singapore International Festival of Arts 2024. Tickets available here

SIFA 2024: They Declare runs from 17th May to 2nd June 2024 across various venues. Tickets and full programme available here