The 80-minute show relies heavily on an unexpected performer: Sebastian Marcovici, L.A. Dance Project’s associate artistic director, who appears here as a camera operator, filming the dancers as they move through the Park Avenue Armory’s various halls and rooms, circling them, highlighting a hand (or two) apart from a body, capturing a performer’s face as they look intimidating, impish, or effortlessly in love. These images, throughout the show, appear on a large screen which hangs above a platform stage which the dancers occupy only sometimes. Marcovici, as it happens, is also a former New York City Ballet principal.

It was not immediately clear just how much of the show would unfold onscreen. The camera, in the first few moments of the performance, seems like more of a gimmick than an essential player. Shu Kinouchi, as Mercutio, is one of the first dancers to take to the actal stage, and with his light footwork and playful grin, he establishes his position early on as a standout. He’s the one who writes the title card, of sorts, for the program: the camera films him writing “Romeo & Juliet” on a back wall, with dancers Daphne Fernberger (Romeo) and Rachel Hutsell (Juliet) standing next to their characters’ names. It’s a cute, somewhat cinematic choice that also serves a purpose: for those who might not recognize Mercutio for his playfulness or Tybalt for his severity, it’s otherwise hard to distinguish the different clans of the Montagues and Capulets.

There are several scenes which bring most of the dancers on stage in an energetic boon. Millepied’s choreography is often quick, with dancers spiraling around themselves in many a tour jeté. Through several of these sequences, an overhead camera is projected on the screen behind the dancers, showing them moving in formations, Bugsby Berkeley style. The visual effect is entrancing, but at somewhat of a cost: the movement on screen is, more often than not, more engaging than the movement happening onstage at the very same time.