“Roméo et Juliette: de la Haine à l'Amour” background events: Le Bal
Lots of things happen during the ball scene in RetJ. It’s a massive swarm of moving colors set to snazzy music you’ll never get out of your head, but it’s more than that, too. The whole scene is rich with character interactions that add to the story or are simply entertaining. A (likely incomplete) list of what happens is as follows:
Lady Capulet presenting Juliette to the Prince. The Prince in turn kisses Juliette on the forehead or cheek, it’s hard to tell since they aren’t in focus.
Tybalt seeing La Mort, recognizing her, wondering why she’s there, and then nervously running off to Juliette. Not in the background, I know, but no one is talking about it and that breaks my heart.
Le Poete dancing with the Prince’s date. The Prince himself is dancing with a Capulet girl.
La Muette stealing the Nurse’s dance partner. She seems pretty upset and you can her her yelling about it.
The Prince and Lady Capulet dancing together and discusing something over a dance.
Comte Capulet nabbing his wife back from the Prince.
Tybalt’s mistress striking up a conversation with a Montaigu man.
Juliette noticing Parîs was starting toward her and looking the other way. One of her cousins comes to her rescue and starts talking to him to distract him.
Tybalt talking to Benvolio.
Also not in the background, but La Muette and Juliette gossiping. I can’t figure out the first sign, but the second one means “ugly” and they’re laughing. La Muette also signs “Tybalt” right before he playfully grabs Juliette again.
The Prince and his date talking to a Capulet girl (but not the one he was dancing with).
La Muette trying to calm Tybalt down after he recognizes Roméo. When she leaves him alone, he keeps staring at Roméo and yells about him being there.
Tybalt bowing to Parîs before going off to dance with Juliette again.
Not much else happens after “L'amour heureux” because that’s mostly focused on kicking the party crashing Montaigus out, but there is a bit of stuff Tybalt does and it really adds to the understanding of his character. He:
Gets a bit more grabby with his mistress (having her show a lot of leg there, Prince of Cats)
Gestures to something with her. She agrees
Spends the rest of his time in the scene looking for La Mort.
It ends with a tableau showing Juliette reaching for Roméo, Tybalt reaching for La Mort, and the Prince looking on it all.
If you know what that first sign between Juliette and La Muette is, please let me know. If you have any screenshots or gifs of anything I mentioned or had your own observations, feel free to share.
