We Review: Roméo & Juliette @ PNB

We'll tell you right now, there is just not going to be a better Valentine's Day-ish gift than this Roméo et Juliette.

When we lived in France, we got used to rounding a corner and seeing an impossibly attractive young French couple having what seemed to be fully clothed intercourse. On a park bench. In the train station. Outside a bar. Halfway up a mountain. In the bus. Ah, la jeunesse! the older people would cluck nostalgically, while gazing with frank interest on the handfuls of public theatre.

From the looks of his choreography for Roméo et Juliette, running through February 10 at Pacific Northwest Ballet [tickets], Jean-Christophe Maillot knows what's at the heart of the story is that sweaty, quivering adolescent display. Yes, there's the shoving matches, the big Requins vs. Jets rumble, but even when this Roméo and Juliette are separated by the cold fury of a feud, they're circling back to each other's arms.

As for the choreography, here's a trailer that will give you a feel for Maillot's fingertips-to-toe aesthetic. We don't know that we've ever seen a ballet where so much resided in the dancer's hands, rather than their feet. Lucien Postlewaite (Romeo) and Noelani Pantastico (Juliette) could simply be iconic figures -- they look the parts -- but their dazed, feverish, incredulous embraces are so personal they can make you want to look away. (Of course you don't, you just fan yourself and wonder why the A/C isn't on.)

Maillot has caught the multitude of half-gestures and confusions that come with first love, the odd magnetic flexion of two bodies circling around an attraction that isn't located purely in either one. He's also a genius of pantomime that not only doesn't suggest walking into the wind, but allows you to follow the story, and even ache to see what's coming in the way a gown briefly flips into a shroud. The set, a collection of sliding panels, simply foregrounds the dancers and some of the most strikingly beautiful costuming we've seen on any stage (though we felt for the dancers in short capes).

We're shorting the work of Olivier Wevers (Friar Laurence, a well-intentioned observer powerless to intervene, like a Unitarian deity or a UN peacekeeping force), Jonathan Porretta (Mercutio, a playful action-hero ) and Casey Herd (that buzzkill prick Tybalt), and Jodie Thomas (Juliette's wacky wild-child nurse), and the ensemble dancing at the ball -- true, not every jump landed cleanly but it was in favor of an emotional presence and rawness that professional ballet can lack. Not this time.

Big, heart-stoppingly beautiful photos after the jump.

Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist Lucien Postlewaite (Romeo) and principal dancer Noelani Pantastico (Juliette) in Jean-Christophe Maillot's Roméo et Juliette. © Angela Sterling