Under the watchful eye of Texas Ballet Theater artistic director Ben Stevenson, the classic Romeo and Juliet becomes a great work of dance that eventually exists on a different plane from its Shakespearean roots.
Of course, all the basics of arguably one of theater's most famous romantic tragedies -- the star-crossed lovers, the feuding families, the combustible setting of 16th-century Verona -- form the scaffolding of this ballet.
And to be sure, everything from the masked-ball meeting to the romantic balcony scene are reproduced with their Shakespearean magic intact.
But this production is able to soar even beyond Shakespeare's lofty original, based on the choreography produced by the TBT dancers and the majestic score courtesy of Prokofiev.
