"The Taming of the Shrew" Le Ballets de Monte Carlo video version

The Taming of the Shrew

Music by Dmitri Shostakovich · after William Shakespeare

In Jean-Christophe Maillot’s interpretation, The Taming of the Shrew is not a story of submission, but a duel between equals. The choreographer deliberately rejects a machistic reading of Shakespeare’s play, seeing in the classic plot the encounter of two strong personalities incompatible with social “norms.”

Katherina and Petruchio are not victim and tamer. Their sharpness, aggression, and social unruliness stem from loneliness and the absence of an equal counterpart. When they find each other, they do not break — they recognise themselves.

Katherina “submits” not because she is defeated, but because she chooses to play submission. Petruchio is not deceived — he sees through her completely. To the outside world, everything appears as a triumph of social convention, but in reality the characters create their own closed union, governed by different rules.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s music lends the ballet nervous energy, irony, and an almost cinematic sharpness. Maillot’s choreography is virtuosic, sensual, and charged with erotic tension: the narrative unfolds through a continuous flow of movement, without a single “empty” pause. This is a ballet about love beyond standards — a union built not on compromise, but on the recognition of equality and mutual strength.