Where do you stand on the issue of kissing in ballet? I'd never given it any thought, since I'd never seen any of it, until last week's opening of the H.O.T.T. Roméo et Juliette at Pacific Northwest Ballet. From my review, coming out tomorrow:

Ballet was created to deter the disruptiveness of bodies. It is about control, mastery, and form, and it is awesome and reassuring. It does not moan. So what do you get in most of the 80 ballet versions of Romeo and Juliet? Teenagers with no hormones. Nobody copping a feel. No kissing—no way. Love is a Platonic thing that is impressive and repressive and wears its hair in a bun. It's nothing to do with sex.

That's the Romeo and Juliet that Pacific Northwest Ballet audiences had been watching for 21 years, choreographed by former co-artistic director Kent Stowell (to the Tchaikovsky score). But there is a new chestnut in town, introduced only 18 months ago and now brought back already—thanks to popular demand—by the choice of Peter Boal, who took over the company in 2005.

This Romeo and Juliet is Roméo et Juliette (to Prokofiev's score), choreographed in the mid-90s by Frenchman Jean-Christophe Maillot of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. ... It seduces the audience with everything the dancers have, not just some of it—their command and their release; their Olympian ability not just to spin bolt upright but also to ache; their fingers, eyes, mouths; their acting. Feels are copped. Making out is not symbolized: it occurs.

On PNB's site, you can watch a few video snippets from R&J, but none of them really captures the raw hormonal sexiness that happens onstage. For that you'll have to go to the production, which continues this Thursday to Sunday.

(Note: If you have a date planned for anytime this weekend, and you don't go to this ballet, you are truly dumb. This is incredibly prime date material.)

Looking around at videos of Maillot's other choreography, I found this extended kiss. It's not as hot as the balcony scene in Roméo et Juliette, but ... wow.

The most complete video of Maillot's R&J that I could find—still, it definitely must be seen in the flesh—is here.

Furthermore, PNB principal dancer Olivier Wevers (who plays the awesome Friar Laurence in R&J) has just today announced the launch of his own company featuring, among other dancers, Roméo (the luscious Lucien Postlewaite).