City Ballet Romeo and Juliet Dance

ON Tuesday night, a red carpet will lead up to the New York State Theater for New York City Ballet's gala premiere of Peter Martins's "Romeo and Juliet." Women in couture and their dinner-jacketed companions will smile as cameras flash. Inside, Prokofiev's shivery music will swell, the curtain will rise and the eternal tale of the doomed lovers will take its course.

To much of the audience, it will be just another night at the ballet - perhaps an exciting one. But for the dancers, balletmasters, designers, production manager, musicians, stagehands, carpenters, fabric painters, costume-makers, sword-fighting teachers and above all the choreographer, this will be the moment when more than a year of intense thought, planning and activity is put to the test.

Staging such a large production is like first creating, then fitting together thousands of interlocking jigsaw pieces. However the work is judged by critics, audiences and posterity, the requirements are always the same: money, time and very, very hard work. Here is a partial account of City Ballet's year of creating "Romeo and Juliet," along with some recollections by those involved.

EARLY 2006 After asking himself "whether the world really needs another "Romeo and Juliet," Mr. Martins, balletmaster in chief of City Ballet, decides to talk to Per Kirkeby, the Danish visual artist who worked with him on "Swan Lake."

"Peter said to me, ‘I'm thinking of "Romeo and Juliet," but I'll only do it if you are part of it,' " Mr. Kirkeby later recalls. "I thought to myself, ‘It will be endless time and trouble and decision-making.' Then I said O.K."

For Mr. Martins, signing on Mr. Kirkeby for the costumes and décor was the easy part. "Romeo and Juliet" is his first original full-length ballet. (His "Sleeping Beauty" and "Swan Lake" were based on traditional versions.) And it is a much-choreographed favorite of choreographers and audiences, a staple for big repertory companies of the kind that City Ballet - famous for its short, abstract works - is decidedly not.

But Mr. Martins, who succeeded George Balanchine as balletmaster in chief in 1983, has been brooding on "Romeo and Juliet" for years, watching DVDs of other choreographers' versions and obsessively listening to the score. He has a clear idea of what he wants: One intermission. More ballet. Less crowd action. A single-unit set allowing scene changes before the audience's eyes.

He talks to Perry Silvey, City Ballet's director of production. "I'm the one who has to bring every idea back to reality," Mr. Silvey says later. "How many people does it take to open up the unit? What kind of casters does it slide on? How many people can it hold and still be moved easily?"

In Copenhagen, Mr. Kirkeby begins to design the unit and the backdrops. "I want it to be painterly, scenic," he says. "It's not a movie."

SUMMER Mr. Martins asks the company's music coordinator, Richard Moredock, to work on the Prokofiev score. "Theatrically, it's hard in many ways," Mr. Moredock said. "There are a lot of cinematic devices - people are inside, outside, alone, in a crowd - without much transition in the libretto. I knew before Peter said anything that he would want only one intermission. That is the biggest challenge musically, since Prokofiev didn't write it that way."

In August, Mr. Martins meets Rick Washburn of Weapons Specialists Ltd., a company that provides arms for movies and television and teaches performers how to use them. "The fights in the ballet are so important in story terms, and yet they are often obviously fake," Mr. Martins says. "I want them to be fierce and realistic." Although Mr. Washburn and his partners have never worked with dancers, they agree to take on the project .

SEPTEMBER After a week in Copenhagen with Mr. Kirkeby, Mr. Martins, Mr. Silvey and Mark Stanley, the resident lighting designer, have made significant progress, talking through every scene in the ballet. Mr. Martins decides to have the intermission just before the lovers are wed: "Afterwards everything goes wrong."

After returning to New York, Mr. Martins carries out his most controversial artistic decision: to have leading dancers close to the age of Shakespeare's characters. He tells 16-year-old Callie Bachman, a tiny, blond student at the School of American Ballet, that he would like her to learn the role of Juliet. "Everyone that I discuss it with says, ‘But can she act?' " he says afterward. "I keep saying, ‘I hope not.' I just want her to be what she is: young." Ms. Bachman is, understandably, a little overwhelmed.