Some Enchanted Evening

The Philadelphia Ballet just premiered its current choreographer-in-residence, Juliano Nunes’s “Romeo and Juliet.” It is a triumph of dreamy and gifted choreography enhanced by Youssef Hotait’s inspired set and costumes. I particularly loved the adorable little crimped farthingale-cum-tutu Oksana Maslova as Juliet wears over a sheer skirt in one scene. His set and costumes transformed the Elizabethan play into a romantic, if typically doomed fairytale. Conductor Beatrice Jona Affron’s non-invasive cuts to Prokofiev’s score—from three sections to two—made for an enchanted evening of lyrical ballet.

Performance

Philadelphia Ballet: “Romeo and Juliet” by Juliano Nunes

Place

The Academy of Music, Philadelphia, PA, May 7, 2026

Words

Merilyn Jackson

Thays Golz and Zecheng Liang of Philadelphia Ballet in “Romeo and Juliet” by Juliano Nunes. Photograph by Alexander Iziliaev

Hotait created a wonderfully monolithic open storybook as the main backdrop. Dancers turned the pages as the scenes changed. Lighting designer Brad Fields’ pastel blues and pinkish hues darken as each page turns to its bitter end. And Nune’s naturalistic choreography give this production a contemporary look, even with slight hints of Bauschian recklessness in moments, without losing any sense of classicism.

Nunes’s choreography highlights the Shakespearian hand movements in numerous dance phrases. Romeo’s (Arian Molina Soca) hands go limp in resignation, Juliet (Maslova) splays hers to the audience in dread, Tybalt (Pau Pajul) and his friend (Isaac Hollis) grasp sword hilts. Lady Capulet (Natalie Patel) wrings her hands in frustration with Juliet’s intransigence. Backs of hands caress cheeks, hands clasped in prayer or fisted in anger. Nunes must have known his Shakespeare. According to AI, the word hand appears at least 65 times in his text, and hands, 35. So from touch to semiotics, the hand plays a major role in his movement schema.

But so too is the bending of classic technique. Men in mid leaps arch backs instead of freezing ramrod straight. Especially for the boys, whose playfully showy jumps and party hands liven up the guests at the ball. Knees are soft and bouncy to propel the next leaps, giving an almost a jazz dance or folksy look.

Instead of maintaining a neutral spine, Nunes curves the core, swaying the port de bras—back and forward, or side to side giving the upper body movements a mutable look. This unpredictability and a weight shifting you don’t often see in classical ballet, underscores the narrative of the play. Portentous phrases project Tybalt’s entitlement, Federico D’Ortenzi as Mercutio’s clownish whimsy, Javier Rivet loyalty to Romeo as Benvolio, and Juliet’s indecisiveness between her love for Romeo and duty to her parents.

Jorge Garcia Alonso of Philadelphia Ballet in “Romeo and Juliet” by Juliano Nunes. Photograph by Alexander Iziliaev

In the first scenes the market workers skip forward, arms raised joyfully as they prepare for Juliet’s and Paris’s wedding. The Rose is another symbol throughout, looming above the lovers on one page of the book. The three Bridesmaids join the market dancers, high kicking in their dusty rose costumes. Their échappés, look totally classical until you realize they begin on flat feet, again, a sort of optical illusion that heightens the look of post-classicism in Nunes’s choreography.

Maslova’s pliancy in her duets with Molina, from first glance to balcony to bed and to the chapel where Friar Lawrence played by Alexie Borovik—a decades long beloved dancer with the company—takes pity on them and marries them. I was delighted to see him.

Along with Juliet’s variation, the “Dance of the Knights,” is perhaps the most widely recognizable section of the Prokofiev score. In allegro pesante, it’s ponderous even bombastic, as it should be given the inflated sense of themselves the knights project. As the page turns for the Capulet ball, a Bleeding Heart of Jesus entwined in thorns, backgrounds the scene. It echoes the blood red gilets the Montague men wear over white tights as they haughtily crash the party. The full cast seems onstage for the formal dancing that takes on a delightfully playful ambience as the dancers skip forward to the beat, one arm on their hips, the other waving scarves in the air.

Pau Pujol is a rarefied Tybolt, handsome, arrogant, entitled and elegant, he delivers a vainglorious solo, with precision and ease as Nunes gives him some of the most classical looking phrases. His devant jetés and tours derrière gave me goosebumps.

He and his friends, among them Isaac Hollis, soon brandish their swords menacingly. D’Ortenzi/Mercutio alternately cock snooks and mollifies them, before taking up his own sword. He continuously mocks Tybolt, even as their blades graze each other’s in counter-parries, until he is incredulously impaled and staggers about in a clownish, lengthy death. When Romeo sees his corpse, his youth seems to drain away and he picks up Mercutio’s sword to kill Tybalt.

By now Juliet and Romeo have fallen inextricably in love and Maslova and Molina have brought them to life with the innocence of first love, but not lacking in lust.

Zecheng Liang of Philadelphia Ballet in “Romeo and Juliet” by Juliano Nunes. Photograph by Alexander Iziliaev

But it was overall and as it should be, Maslova and Molina’s evening. Maslova’s utter delicacy, her arms as supple as a 13 year-old’s, her youthful daring and trust as she propels herself into Molina’s waiting arms, vertically, horizontally, and his cherishing strength in his catches were almost beyond belief. There were fabulous fishdives, and the horizontal catches are more like gentle caresses. Even though Maslova is small and light, catching someone throwing themselves at you at top speed has got to be something of a gut punch. If it took all his strength, Molina didn’t show it. It was like watching him catch a feather. At one point he swings her like a pendulum, mirroring the theme of the work.

Her parents won’t relent on her betrothal to Paris, danced ruefully by Russell Drucker. Sterling Baca, as Lord Capulet Juliet’s father, works his hands in sign language that says all this is mine not yours. Your mother, you and I are family. Natalie Patel, Lady Capulet her mother. wrings her hands imploringly at her daughter to marry Paris. But Juliet has already given herself to Romeo, and Nunes has her slap Paris, a coup de grâce from which Drucker walks away, shoulders slumped. A deviation from the Shakespeare, but a sensational one.

People had begun to weep even before Borovik gives Juliet the potion, instructing her how to use just enough to sleep but not to poison herself. The Bridesmaids come tittering in and can’t awaken her, sounding an alarm. Romeo finds Paris sincerely grieving over Juliet’s body as both mistake her for dead. Their confrontation ends in Paris’s death, followed by Romeo’s suicide. Juliet awakens to the horrifying scene and dances a sensuous solo as if with Romeo’s ghost, recalling their one night of ecstasy. She drinks the poison and drapes herself over Romeo.

Although the Philadelphia Ballet has a solid repertoire, I’d love to see more of Nunes’s style and choreography give it fresh breath. This was also music director and conductor Beatrice Jona Affron’s final performance after so many years. She leaves to conduct the New York City Ballet orchestra. We wish her all the best, but will miss her as the audience adored her.

Merilyn Jackson

Merilyn Jackson has written on dance for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1996 and writes on dance, theater, food, travel and Eastern European culture and Latin American fiction for publications including the New York Times, the Warsaw Voice, the Arizona Republic, Phoenix New Times, MIT’s Technology Review, Arizona Highways, Dance Magazine, Pointe and Dance Teacher, and Broad Street Review. She also writes for tanz magazin and Ballet Review. She was awarded an NEA Critics Fellowship in 2005 to Duke University and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for her novel-in-progress, Solitary Host.

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