There was a point, during Cassandra Trenary’s debut as Juliet last summer at American Ballet Theater, when it became easy to forget that she was performing the role at all. She just was Juliet: furious, despondent, at her wit’s end. It was wildly raw and vulnerably human. Typically, in Kenneth MacMillan’s production of “Romeo and Juliet,” that moment is drawn out, with Juliet deeply arching her back in a cambré derrière over the tomb. Trenary, a 29-year-old principal dancer with Ballet Theater, is on a mission to be authentic — to make it seem as though, as she said, “life is unfolding in front of you through this vocabulary that is very not humanlike.”

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Persons: Cassandra Trenary’s, Juliet, Kenneth MacMillan’s, Romeo, Trenary, ” Organizations: Ballet Theater, Ballet