A breathtaking, rejuvenated Bolshoi Ballet is back, performing through Sunday at the Auditorium Theatre, demonstrably inspired by a new artistic director.

Led since January by Alexei Ratmansky, the troupe, whose name means "big" and whose trademark is ballet on a colossal scale, delivers all the speed, energy and airborne thrills of "Don Quixote," which opened its five-day engagement Wednesday.

"Don Quixote" boasts one of the slimmest story lines and most exhilarating dancing of the classical full-lengths. It takes Cervantes' tale and makes of it a mere bagatelle, a romance between two minor characters, reducing the would-be knight to a mostly humorous character role. But its leads, the innkeeper's daughter, Kitri, and her barber boyfriend, Basil, enjoy some of the most feverish and dazzling choreographic feats in classical repertory, underscored by Ludwig Minkus' deliciously fey take on Spanish folk music.

The Bolshoi production was most recently choreographed by Alexei Fadeyechev, drawing on Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky. But the real key is in the lavish production values (the costumes are a sumptuous banquet by themselves) and the top-notch dancers.

In recent years, Bolshoi productions seemed inconsistent, uninspired and overly showy. There is a bravura rush to "Don Quixote," too, and the company's idea of storytelling is unfocused and flat, compared to American or British approaches to full-lengths.

But the company proves with this production that it can still deliver classical ballet with incomparable verve, command and excitement. As Kitri, Maria Alexandrova is a performance phenomenon, in charge of every moment on stage, gifted with immaculate poise, precision and line. She is something of an all-round dancer, astonishing whether hopping on one foot or whipping through some 30 fouettes during the show-off finale. Poetry is more the stuff of the Kirov Ballet, and yet, even though "Don Quixote" doesn't really require much, here and there Alexandrova managed whispers of delicacy and fluidity, one of those performers born to the art and born to master it.

Sergey Filin, as Basil, is remarkably agile, smooth and exact, delivering his final solos with aplomb and seeming ease.

Other players worth noting include the incendiary gypsy turn by seductive Yulianna Malkhasyants, Timofey Lavrenyuk and Irina Serenkova as a toreador and his partner, and marvelous variations by Anastasia Meskova and Nelli Kobakhidze in the grand finale.

The Bolshoi continues to favor the lavish and large over intimate, beautiful or touching. But this production manages a lovely corps de ballet dream sequence, and the amazing rush and agility of the technical delivery is a headstrong celebration of the art form's circus splendors.

Unlike past visits, this one includes the troupe's own orchestra providing a masterful rendering of the score and clear inspiration for the dancers.