Like Spinning Plates

"Eh, I'm not a big fan of dance..."

It's a common refrain among my circle when I mention a ballet performance at Jacob's Pillow.

Oh, but this is a modern take on Shakespeare's most famous love story, I counter. Seven Slovenian dancers. A short-and-sweet sixty minutes. All set to Radiohead songs!

And that's when heads cock to the side, smiles emerge, and the yeah, I could get into that murmurs begin.

I'm not a dance critic--we have Robin Catalano for that--but I have decent taste. I caught Radiohead when they played Mansfield, Mass., last summer, and, at the very least, I appreciate all art forms. So let me just say: Ballet Maribor's Radio and Juliet lives up to the hype.

Choreographer Edward Clug pairs the ultimate wrist-slicing soundtrack with the ultimate heart-wrenching love tragedy. Not with romantic weepiness, but with beautiful, body-chilling despair.

The dancers are solid limbed yet weightless, graceful and snappy. Juliet is always tucked into a corset. Romeo (which of the six is he? we wonder at first) and his posse are sheathed in sleek black suits (Ralph Lauren?) unbuttoned over their chiseled torsos; each time they twirl or twist we catch a glimpse of shiny hidden jewels--the garments' silky purple lining. Details.

It's ballet and it's totally fresh. During the futuristic spoken-word over sad piano "Fitter Happier," Juliet's limbs jerk in swift staccato, as if she's a robot herself. A pawn in this chess game of love? This goes on for so long until it comes to an abrupt halt and I realize I've been holding my breath.

In one of the black-and-white film projections on the stage's backdrop, a pause between dances, a naked Juliet rests perfectly still in a bathtub of water, eyes frozen open, the clicking of the film reel faint alongside Thom Yorke's hopeful wail. And then, just as the music ends, final punctuation: a deep, dark grumble of thunder from outside of the theatre's walls.

This is Becket, in the middle of a rainstorm. Mother Nature on percussion surprised the audience at the moments one might expect surprises, which made the performance all the more eerie.

While our volatile climate promises nothing, Radio and Juliet delivers an experience, thunderstorms or not. But there are only four more performances through Sunday July 5. Just go.