WHEN dance educator-choreographers Bonnie Neate and Suzy Piani burst on to the mainstage scene last year with their contemporary take on “Giselle”, many people were unprepared for the breathtaking quality of the production, which instantly won a Canberra Critics’ Circle Award.

Neate and Piani, co-directors of The Training Ground, based in Phillip, had years of highly disciplined classical dance teaching and were determined to make their mark with a production offering serious roles for seriously ambitious young Canberra dancers wishing to extend their skills, and thereby keep them in the ACT. 

Their focus is on technique and graduates of their training program have found places in major dance schools such as NZ School of Dance, Sydney Dance Company’s pre-professional year and the Victorian College of the Arts as a result. 

Last year’s “Giselle” production, “Unveiled”, was a strong female-driven story with a strong female protagonist, which makes sense in the world of ballet.

But when I catch up with them, I find the focus in what they call their “passionate project” is now on dual protagonists – the star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. 

That word dual is very important because one of the highest attainments for a classically-trained dancer is in the “pas de deux” (a dance for two), a key part of their training.

“But more than that, we wanted to depict the relationship and to make it about two families, two people and two sides,” Neate says.

And telling that story will involve slow, tender moments and fierce battles involving the entire cast.

“We like our dance to be accessible to audiences,” Piani says. “And with the story of Romeo and Juliet, it’s easy to work on character.

“The story has been danced over years… even Nureyev played Romeo and Graeme Murphy did it with the Australian Ballet.”

But they want to present it and expose it in a different way to a modern audience – “to jazz things up a bit”.

That’s where the title “Unravel” comes in. In fact, the metaphor of an unwinding thread is very common when describing drama and audiences will see the unravelling as the plot moves along.

“We are pulling apart the story bit by bit and that culminates in the ultimate tragedy,” Neate says.

It is traditional in “Romeo and Juliet” that the payoff is reconciliation between the two families, even in “West Side Story”, but at this point Neate and Piani chorus: “We can’t tell you that, we will leave that for the actual performance.”

Apart from pulling the story apart, they’ve been having fun making the drama visually comprehensible, with the Montagues clad in corporate-looking black, albeit with a dash of sequins and the Capulets, who they see as more down to earth and playful, in deep burgundy. 

“Unravel” is bound to be very different from the production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” coming to Rep later in the month. 

For instance, some of the main male characters, such as Tybalt and Mercutio, are gone. With the predominance of female dancers, the focus turns on Mrs Capulet, Mrs Montague, the nurse and an invented character, Juliet’s best friend.

The most exciting part to Neate and Piani is their reimagination of the pairing between the young lovers. They were lucky enough to get Josh Walsh, back from the NZ School of Dance, to play the technically demanding part of Romeo.

Walsh had proved to be the perfect partner to Juliet, danced by Ali Mayes, a Year 12 Canberra College student who has been with Neate and Piani for some years.

Pairing is not as easy as you’d think, Piani says. The dancers work at very close quarters to achieve the lifts that are a part of the art form, with close attention paid to handgrips and emotional contact.

The pair emphasise that theirs is a skills-based program rather than a choreographic one.

“Our main focus is to train skills through a lot of floor work, a lot of upper-body strength and core strength and a lot of training,” they say.

As for the music, while a recent showcase suggested a hint of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”, they’ve sourced music from far and wide, with some classical, some rock, some piano and a little bit of hip-hop influence.

“Unravel”, Erindale Theatre, July 22-23.