Ballets on Shakespearean tragedies highlight SIDCT September shows

The Shanghai International Dance Center Theater is bringing a slew of dazzling dance performances to the local stage in September, including two ballet dances adapted from Shakespearean tragedies.

Ballet: Juliet and Romeo

Juliet and Romeo reimagines Shakespeare's tragedy amid the skeletal remains of an industrial wasteland, fusing post-war trauma with visceral movement. Love and hatred are no longer spoken but enacted: dancers teeter on steel cables, their bodies both resisting and submitting to a history scarred by violence.

In this contemporary retelling, fate is questioned rather than accepted. Words of devotion become silent, muscular protests; Juliet's ascent along cold metal rails is a defiant grasp at agency, while Romeo's inward collapse embodies a generation's private anguish. The Balletto di Roma dissolves the line between theater and dance, letting choreography carry every unuttered feeling. Each clamber, reach, and crumple among iron beams is a cipher for post-war souls searching for meaning inside collective wounds, turning Shakespeare's timeless lovers into living allegories of resilience and despair.

If you go

Date: Sept 6, 7:30pm

Duration: About 110 min

Venue: Grand Theater @ Shanghai International Dance Center

上海国际舞蹈中心·大剧场

Tickets: 80-680 yuan (US$11-95)

Hotline: 021-5299-0372/5299-5821

Ballet: Othello

Balletto di Roma stages Othello in a modern seaport, using steel cables, rusted frames, and industrial imagery to turn Shakespeare's jealousy into a visceral ballet. Bodies fight gravity instead of performing classical lifts; Iago's plot becomes a mechanical "gear mechanism dance," and the final knife-into-tulle moment indicts patriarchal violence. The production pits tradition against modernity, expanding how ballet can speak of love, prejudice, and power.

If you go

Date: Sept 7, 2pm

Duration: About 110 min

Venue: Grand Theater @ Shanghai International Dance Center

上海国际舞蹈中心·大剧场

Tickets: 80-680 yuan

Hotline: 021-5299-0372/5299-5821

Enowate

In Enowate, meaning "truth stands," Dickson Mbi, a dancer of extraordinary power and grace, unspools a solo that shapeshifts as fluidly as memory. Inspired by a life-changing journey to his ancestral home in Cameroon, Mbi summons multiple identities in this mesmerising performance. The symbolic presence of a two-headed snake, the tiger whose roar vibrated as part of a funeral ritual, the knowing touch of a blind elder … these unnerving encounters slid beneath his skin, binding the animist pulse of his heritage to the bass-driven nights of his East London youth, profoundly affecting the London choreographer.

Enowate draws on sinuous elements of hip-hop and contemporary dance in combination with original music and otherworldly animation projections. In asking the relatable question, "Who am I?" Mbi connects with enigmatic forces to reveal himself and step out of the shadow and into the luminous complexity of self.

If you go

Date: Sept 19/20, 7:30pm

Duration: About 60 min

Venue: Grand Theater @ Shanghai International Dance Center

上海国际舞蹈中心·大剧场

Tickets: 80-680 yuan

Hotline: 021-5299-0372/5299-5821

Muerta de Amor

Spanish National Dance Award-winner Manuel Liñán returns to Shanghai with his revolutionary new work.

With a male ensemble embodying desire and defiance, Muerta de Amor reconstructs the "language of love" through strength and fluidity.

Flamenco's rebellious aesthetics collide with traditional Copla music, unleashing shockwaves that slash through the stage – pink and black tearing open the truth of love.

Liñán delves into his own romantic history to expose the deepest yearnings of humanity – Love dies, so it may live forever.

If you go

Date: Sept 26, 7:30pm; Sept 27, 2pm

Duration: About 105 min

Venue: Grand Theater @ Shanghai International Dance Center

上海国际舞蹈中心·大剧场

Tickets: 80-880 yuan

Hotline: 021-5299-0372/5299-5821

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