Romeo and Juliet

Seeing as Im a dance major, it is to be assumed that out of all the people in the class, I would attend the ballet....and I did. :) My experience of the ballet was alittle more raw than others whom may have attended the same show, because I saw the dress rehearsal instead of the real show. This was a great and new experience for me, because it was my first time sitting in on a professional companies rehearsal, and get to see what all goes into putting on a ballet. The dancers were in full costume and ran through the show from beginning to end, stopping every once in awhile to fix spacings that were wrong and re-due openings that werent quite on que. As a whole the show ran very smoothly and the dancers were well prepared to open the following night. Noelani Pantastico danced the role of Juliet while Lucien Postwaite played her Romeo. Both of them did a magnificent job filling the characters, although I found Romeo's role to be a bit too over dramamtic for my liking. His love didnt seem as authentic and real as Juliets. Te show also had a strong comedic sense to it as Jonathan Poretta tricked his oponents in duels and hit on every lady to walk to stage; a perfectly portrayed Mercutio who is the main comic relief of the play. The set was very interesting to me becuse it was much more bare than I expected. There was a ramp that could lower and rise for the dancers, in the back right corner of the stage, and a sort of half moon sphere on wheels that created the allusion of a wall, seperate room, or Juliets bed. I liked the simplicity of the set design because it allowed you to focus mainly on the dancing and kept the scene changes to a simple level. I enjoyed this ballet very much and would highly recommend it to people of all ages.