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For much of “Romeo & Juliet Suite,” Benjamin Millepied’s stripped-down take on the Sergei Prokofiev ballet—billed as a gender-bent, “contemporary, site-specific” version of Shakespeare’s classic—I find myself thinking of a different play by the bard. Specifically, the direction in The Winter’s Tale: “Exit, pursued by a bear.” Most of the drama here, after all, happens offstage.

Performance

Los Angeles Dance Project: “Romeo and Juliet Suite” by Benjamin Millepied

Place

Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY, March 5, 2026

Words

Rebecca Deczynski

Giacomo Luci and Emma Spinosi in “Romeo & Juliet Suite” by Benjamin Millepied at Park Avenue Armory. Photograph by Stephanie Berger

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.

Renan Cerdeiro and Shu Kinouchi in “Romeo & Juliet Suite” by Benjamin Millepied at Park Avenue Armory. Photograph by Stephanie Berger

Millepied, with all his Hollywood bonafides, does seem, at this point in his career, more suited to choreographing for the screen than stage. This becomes apparent when during one of the biggest moments of Prokofiev’s score—the “Dance of the Knights”—the dancing happens entirely on camera. The dancers are in a dark room dotted with the disco-esque lights. Renan Cerdeiro—Tybalt—frequently looks directly into the camera with severity, standing in the middle of a thrashing company of dancers. It’s cool to watch for a time, but it’s hard not to feel disappointed that the energy of the dramatic, punctuated scene never spills out directly in front of the audience. So often in Millepied’s “Romeo & Juliet Suite,” the merits and unique qualities of live performance are dampened by a reliance on the control and segmentation offered by a camera screen.

This is also apparent in another crucial moment of the ballet—the balcony scene, which, here, does not involve any balcony at all. Instead, our Romeo and Juliet run, hand in hand, through the grand spaces within the Armory, before finally settling in a room unfamiliar to the audience, where they perform a pas de deux.

It’s a perfectly egalitarian pas: Romeo lifts Juliet, and vice versa. (There are three casts for these titular roles—one with two women, one with a man and a woman, and one with two men). There are many moments of stretched arms, more tour jetés, and, in climax, the dancers spin around each other—with the camera spinning around them both. The dancing alone cannot reach the heights that Prokofiev’s emotional score so ardently demands. It needs to be framed.

Giacomo Luci and Emma Spinosi in “Romeo & Juliet Suite” by Benjamin Millepied at Park Avenue Armory. Photograph by Stephanie Berger

Millepied’s strength—as repeatedly proven in “Romeo & Juliet Suite”—is his ability to create arresting images. There’s a shot of Romeo, moving an arm simply, but tenderly, while lying on a sofa. There’s Juliet, also in repose, surrounded by beams of light (in essence, a bunch of light sabers that the corps dancers carry at various moments in the show). There’s Tybalt, more often than not, staring directly into the camera like a threat.

To be sure, there are moments in this production during which its site-specific nature feels exciting and original. Romeo chases Tybalt under the risers, atop which the audience sits, the two moving in an almost maze-like environment. At least, I found myself thinking, they’re in the same room as us this time around.

When Juliet takes the potion that will put her to sleep, it’s offstage. The shots we see, at least, are visually beautiful, suffused with red light and dotted with dancers who appear like statues. That is where Romeo finds her, though after the lights go dark for a moment, they are transported to the stage to enact their actual deaths. It’s hard not to long for the iconic moment in Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo & Juliet” of Romeo dancing with what he believes to be his beloved’s corpse. Here, instead, we get a bit of panicked shaking, a cut wrist, and a cry, followed by the very same thing all over again. It’s a tragedy, of course. But for the viewer who came looking for the thrill and rapture of a live dance performance, it’s a bit of a disappointment, too.

Rebecca Deczynski

Rebecca Deczynski is a New York City-based writer and editor publishes the newsletter Mezzanine Society. Her work has appeared in publications including Inc., Domino, NYLON, and InStyle. She graduated from Barnard College cum laude with a degree in English and a minor in dance.

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