{"id":40805,"date":"2026-03-16T02:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T02:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/40805\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T02:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T02:45:07","slug":"hamlet-prince-of-denmark-shows-shakespeares-masterwork-isnt-just-about-the-soliloquies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/40805\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamlet, Prince of Denmark shows Shakespeare’s masterwork isn’t just about the soliloquies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The true testament to the power of William Shakespeare isn\u2019t just that his works remain revered and relevant 400 years after his death, but that they have come to straddle so many disciplines. Whether your main passion is theatre, film, opera, dance, or even podcasts, you\u2019ve got a place to dive into the world of the greatest playwright and poet the world has ever known.<\/p>\n

Canadian dance icon Guillaume C\u00f4t\u00e9\u2014who brings the movement-based Hamlet, Prince of Denmark to Vancouver this month\u2014remembers his first exposure to Shakespeare in high school. Growing up in a decidedly French-speaking part of rural Quebec, he went to the National Ballet School at age 11, where he discovered that he was going to need to learn English. Shakespeare was there to help.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was in Grade 8 where we started A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream,\u201d he recalls in an interview with the Straight. \u201cThen we worked our way through Macbeth, and I think that Hamlet was in Grade 12. It was difficult. But at the same time I was really fascinated by the poetry within the plays. So learning English and learning Shakespeare was quite magical\u2014it felt like there was much there because it was so rich.\u201d<\/p>\n

Important as those first experiences were, C\u00f4t\u00e9\u2019s game-changing encounter with the works of Shakespeare didn\u2019t come from reading them.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy most direct relationship to Shakespeare came through the ballet Romeo and Juliet,\u201d he shares. \u201cAfter Grade 12 I really dove into my dance career. In dance, one of the most explored of Shakespeare\u2019s stories is Romeo and Juliet. And I got to dance it right off the get-go. I don\u2019t why\u2014I guess I was kind of typecast for having good hair, so I got to do it really early on. And that was an interesting thing because it forced me to really explore the play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruce Zinger. <\/p>\n

For Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, which he also dances in, C\u00f4t\u00e9 collaborated with Canadian visionary Robert Lepage of Quebec\u2019s celebrated multidisciplinary company Ex Machina. C\u00f4t\u00e9 had seen a past one-man telling of Hamlet by Lepage\u00a0 and had his mind blown, with that sparking a friendship that led to them later becoming collaborators.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Laughing, C\u00f4t\u00e9 says, \u201cI sort of mentioned, not casually, but forcefully, \u2018I want to do a Hamlet, and I\u2019d like to do it with you. Because if anyone can help me translate it into dance, and find what is relevant about it through dance, it\u2019s you.\u2019 It took me a while to convince him to dive into the proposition. He was trying to find his point of entry\u2014the how and why and those kinds of questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was also a challenge for C\u00f4t\u00e9. And so he drew on his own past as an artist. At the age of 30, the dancer again found himself cast as Romeo in a new National Ballet production helmed by Alexei Ratmansky. He remembers pushing himself to dive into the play deeper than he ever had, thinking about different interpretations, exploring the layers of the different characters, and dissecting their motivations.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinding these little key moments that Alexei wanted to express through dance was a life-changing experience for me,\u201d he remembers. \u201cThat\u2019s where I knew that I wanted to do something eventually to Shakespeare in that same way.\u201d<\/p>\n

When C\u00f4t\u00e9 and Lepage set out to capture Hamlet through dance, the process started with intensive workshopping. C\u00f4t\u00e9 suggested going an abstract route, where movement was reflecting the psychological aspects of ghosts of the past. Lepage pushed for a more tradition-based approach, albeit with abstract flourishes.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery early on, Robert was like, \u2018No. The only way to do this is by going through Hamlet scene by scene, and doing a proposition where we tell the story exactly as it is, but without the text.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

Telling the story of the Prince of Denmark through dance proved less daunting than one might have expected. While famous for its soliloquies and words, C\u00f4t\u00e9 argues that Hamlet is also an impeccably structured action play that moves from scene to scene quickly. He adds that many scholars have suggested the play\u2019s extended soliloquies were written to give stagehands at the historical Globe Theatre time to move set pieces into place.<\/p>\n

Lepage has a reputation for visually stunning multimedia works, as evidenced by past creations like The Far Side of the Moon and an opera version of The Tempest with Vancouver dance legend Crystal Pite.<\/p>\n

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark takes more of a streamlined approach, both time-wise (an hour and 40 minutes, compared to Shakespeare\u2019s OG five-hour version) and in its staging. Tables double as coffins, mirrors are moved to create hallways, and the ghost of Hamlet\u2019s father is a bedsheet. If that sounds DIY, it shouldn\u2019t, as reviews have raved about the visual innovativeness of the production\u2014not to mention the new way of telling of a centuries-old story that continues to find audiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has a lot in it,\u201d C\u00f4t\u00e9 promises of the show. \u201cRobert is known for multimedia spectacles, but part of it here was budget. It was us sitting down and going, \u2018We don\u2019t have money for much, so what can we afford? We can afford curtains, sheets and swords and tables. And people to choreograph.\u2019 Still, there are moments in the show that are pretty amazing\u2014dancers behind a sheet lifting and drowning Ophelia in a really spectacular way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great to see that it doesn\u2019t take much sometimes\u2014just patience and creativity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

DanceHouse, Ex Machina, and C\u00f4t\u00e9 Danse present Hamlet, Prince of Denmark at Vancouver Playhouse on March 18-21.<\/p>\n

Roman Boldyrev <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter. \u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3875,227,6312,2059,27,26,15990,1972,41,110,1138,2799,2501,1971,3260,2617,2258,8272,23088],"class_list":{"0":"post-40805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denmark","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-city","11":"tag-culture","12":"tag-danmark","13":"tag-denmark","14":"tag-dining","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-events","17":"tag-fashion","18":"tag-film","19":"tag-food","20":"tag-lifestyle","21":"tag-music","22":"tag-nightlife","23":"tag-restaurants","24":"tag-shopping","25":"tag-tv","26":"tag-vancouver"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116236564869041706","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}