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Staged as a collage of small ensemble performance composed of intersecting pas-de-trois, solo performance, and acting sequence, the production contained at all times a maze of various on-stage groupings. In the first act, the production set forth the vision of a multi-tiered city landscape fraught with varying levels of stage architecture, each resonating a different perspective through which to foreground the principal action, the meeting of Montagues with Capulets. A collage of scenes, of costumed artisans mingling the day to day with the sauntering appearance on stage of errant youth, of silent onlookers strolling through crowded streets, the result achieving the allusion of an eerily colorful stage ensemble foregrounding the dramatic. In the opening scene, Pink’s artful use of different background texturing resulted in a rich blend of staging and choreography that not only served to heighten and synchronize with the principal story action, but also show forth the dramatic ranges of dancers. All seemed a natural ascent into a landscape of emotional writhing and pain as street scenes later transformed into a magnificent staging of a Veronese masked ball. As the drama emerged by marked degrees evidenced in the diagonal procession of stylized poses that seemed to crescendo, becoming more pronounced with the ascendancy of each musical phrase, an intimate intertwining of the dramatic with the choreographic left the Fox Theater audience spellbound..

Then there were the comic scenes such as when the charming Mercutio, danced by Brian Wallenberg and in partnership with Benvolio (danced by Jacob Bush) and Christian Clark (as Romeo) performed a richly textured male trio. When, after confronting the angry Tybalt, Mercutio falls, his friends believe he feigns death as cockily he portrays in their midst a swashbuckling faint. The realization calls forth a dramatic performance by Clark that is unprecedented, switching from mockery to disbelief, setting the stage for the star crossed drama to follow

In the balcony scene, so standard to the ballet, the longing and desires of love begin and are transformed through the performance of the pas de deux between Clark and Kristine Necessary. As Juliette and Romeo, Necessary and Clark together transcend the parameters of the stage through a chemistry that was unmistakable. This is a pas de deux whose dramatic ranges would seem to beckon a hitherto unexplored potential for artistic partnership. As a reviewer who has witnessed many productions of this ballet, I found Pink’s staging unequaled in its commanding this company to attain dramatic ranges hitherto unseen. Although a small company, the Atlanta Ballet shows in this production that it can render a time-worn classic immediate and unmatched through an unequaled evening’s performance.

Courtney Necessary as a tortured Lady Capulet also served to heighten the drama in the ballet’s transition to the second act. One awaits to see what roles will be given Christian Clark, trained since the company’s inception by Robert Barnett and others. Certainly this procution, mature from balcony to bedroom to Friar Lawrence’s cell, kept its audience spellbound.