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                                                     BY PAUL HORSLEY
                 FROM THE PAGE TO THE STAGE: DEVON CARNEY’S R&J
              JOURNEY COMES FULL CIRCLE WITH KC BALLET PREMIERE

                  or a kid who was about to devote his entire life to dance, young Devon
                  Carney sure took a long time to realize that Romeo and Juliet was not
            Fjust a Shakespeare play but also one of the most famous ballets in the
            classical repertory. “The first time I actually experienced the ballet was when
            it was choreographed on me,” said the dancer-choreographer, who as Artistic
            Director of Kansas City Ballet is currently creating his own version of the
            ballet for the company’s Diamond Jubilee season-opener this October. “It was
            first introduced to me through the text, and then through seeing it acted as
            a play,” said Devon, who was a lowly 23-year-old member of the corps at
            Boston Ballet when the late Chinese-born choreographer Choo-San Goh
            chose him for the Opening Night lead in 1984 (a performance that made The
            New York Times). “So I had all this background information when I finally
            had the opportunity to be exposed to it as a dancer.”
                                                   Astonishingly, as a youngster
                                                 he’d never even seen a video or
                                                 broadcast  of  one  of  the  well-
                                                 known ballet versions of Romeo
                                                 (such as Frederick Ashton’s or
                                                 John Cranko’s), so as an adult
                                                 dancer he approached it without
                                                 prejudice.  “It  was  really  the
                    Brett Pruitt and East Market Studios
                                                 story, the one literary work of
       Devon Carney,      Devon Carney’s new
      Kansas City Ballet  Romeo and Juliet ballet  Shakespeare’s that I connected
                                                 with  as  an  adolescent,”  said
            Devon, who took the helm at KC Ballet in 2013, “when I was just a kid
            myself.” He had been dancing since age 14 in his native New Orleans, but
            when a high school teacher did a side-by-side comparison of Shakespeare’s
            play with the film version of West Side Story he still didn’t focus on Jerome
            Robbins’ choreography. “For me as a dancer it was interesting,” he said, but
            it was still the story of Romeo and Juliet that fascinated him most.
              Until, that is, he came across Sergey Prokofiev’s music for the ballet shortly
            afterward, which was just as life-changing an experience as getting to know
            the bard’s play. It was in the library of Tulane University, where his father
            was  a  professor,  that  he  first  pulled  out  a  conductor’s  score  and  began
            listening to Prokofiev’s music on the library’s reel-to-reel tapes. “It knocked
            my socks off,” Devon said of the music. “It’s one of my favorite scores in the
            world. … immensely inspiring. It’s a beautiful road-map to the story.”
              Boston Ballet’s Romeo was an enormous success not just for the company
            but for Devon, who was dancing his first principal role (and quickly advanced
            to Soloist and then Principal Dancer in the company), and also for Choo-San,
            who died in 1987. But Devon said he is working hard to create his own
            Romeo, which is not as simple as it might seem.
              “The DNA of Choo-San’s approach to the ballet is with me,” he said. “Now
            that I have my opportunity to interpret the work, I’m trying to be very aware
            of the influence … that these other great interpretations have had upon me,
            and be quite careful not to let those cloud my inspiration.”
              For the full-length version of this article, go to kcindependent.com and
            click on Arts Corner.
              Romeo and Juliet runs from October 13th through the 22nd at the Kauffman
            Center. 816-931-8993 or kcballet.org.

            To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor; send an email to paul@kcindependent.com  ONLINE
                        or find him on Facebook (paul.horsley.501) or Twitter (@phorsleycritic).


















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