Friday night's American premiere of the Bolshoi Ballet's new production of "Romeo and Juliet" demonstrated without a doubt that this venerable 19th century institution has come kicking and screaming (literally) into the 21st century. Directed by the avant-garde English theater director Declan Donnellan, with choreography by Radu Poklitaru, this production brilliantly synthesizes a mix of dramatic styles into a powerful theatrical event.

Gone are many of the dance traditions that have long characterized the Bolshoi. No tutus, no toe shoes, no classical ballet. Instead, the dancers lurch, lumber and undulate through a series of powerfully crafted scenes. Romeo and Juliet, danced by Yan Godovsky and Anastasia Meskova, are awkward adolescents coming together with a stylized ardor and tenacity (he gropes her, she bites him, they seem to devour one another) that foreshadows their poignant resolve to risk all for love.

In the fight scene, a disconcerting mix of stylized sadism and boys-will-be-boys antics reminiscent of the film "Pulp Fiction," Mercutio and Tybalt (played with brash elan by Yury Klevtsov and Alexander Petukhov) switch randomly from macho aggression to cartoonish slapstick.

Nickolas Ormerod's starkly beautiful set, a series of movable rectangular panels searingly and provocatively lit by Judith Greenwood, and his imaginative costumes, an eclectic mix of 20th century dress styles, both define and amplify this divided, warring society.

Donnellan's hyperbolic directorial approach combines the stark modernism and European expressionism of the 1930s with homage to everything from Greek theater to cartoon animation. It's an a pproach that works superbly with Prokofiev's explosive, melodramatic score, played with passionate commitment by the Bolshoi orchestra.

The theme of this production that Romeo and Juliet are the puppets of fate, embodied by their feuding families is realized through that greatest of all Bolshoi assets, its splendid corps de ballet.

Donnellan, who has never before directed a ballet, had the wit to see that this superbly trained unit is the passionate and beating heart of the company.

Throughout, the corps represents the implacable societal forces that divide the transgressive lovers.

After the deaths of Tybalt and Mercutio, they appear as black-clad 1930s Italian fascists: the women literally tear their hair and rend their garments, while the men lurch forward like Mussolini wind-up dolls, inexorably bent on revenge.

While this splendid and innovative production will not be performed again in Minneapolis, audiences will have the opportunity to see the Bolshoi in "Don Quixote", a three-act extravaganza that mixes virtuosic classical ballet with farce and plenty of Spanish brio.