The Bolshoi Ballet is back at the Paramount, this time with two full-length ballets and its own orchestra.

It's in town for five days beginning Wednesday, giving two performances of its new production of "Romeo and Juliet" and four of one of its traditional pieces, "Don Quixote."

Looking for hard currency, like every other Russian institution, the Bolshoi is on the road more than it has ever been. Seattle alone has seen the company every other year in the new century.

Even though the Bolshoi has suffered from artistic turmoil at home (four artistic directors during the past decade), inadequate funding and dated productions, it can still produce dancers that personify the very name of Bolshoi, which means "big" in Russian.

The program of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Don Quixote" is exactly the same one promised for the company's 2000 season in Seattle. However, that appearance featured a traditional version of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Don Quixote" was dropped before it reached town because the performances were not selling.

In its 2002 appearances at the Paramount, the company performed "Swan Lake."

The presence of the company's orchestra is a huge plus for its 2004 tour, which includes Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Berkeley and Mexico City. The orchestra can be traced to the founding of the company in 1776, when ballets began to be staged publicly at the theater.

Until the Russian Revolution, the Bolshoi played second fiddle to the famed Maryinsky (called Kirov in the West). Then its fortunes changed. The capital of the country was moved to Moscow and the company became the showpiece of the government. It made its debut in the West (London and New York) in the mid-1950s and shook the ballet world with the boldness and sheer visceral excitement generated by its dancers.

Its newly appointed artistic director, Alexei Ratmansky, a former soloist with various Russian companies as well as the Royal Danish Ballet, said in an interview earlier this month, "I'm trying to see what I can do without doing revolutionary changes. It's such a machine, it's hard to turn.

"The quality of the dancing, I wouldn't be so brave to say it has changed. I think we have to treasure and go with the star of the Bolshoi, which is unique. I don't want them to be like all the other companies. ... Everybody is going to do that."

Since musicians must serve both ballet and opera, there are some 300 in the orchestra. The touring ensemble consists of 65 musicians.

Although Marius Petipa is most closely associated with the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, his "Don Quixote" had its premiere, in 1869, at the Bolshoi. Inevitably, the ballet has gone through various revisions, but the production stays pretty much within its old parameters.

The ballet is a group effort: Alexei Fadeyechev, a former star of the company and its artistic director for a couple of years in the late 1990s, is given the lead spot on the list of creators, after Petipa and Alexander Gorsky, who made major revisions to the ballet at the turn-of-the-century more than 100 years ago. Design elements can be traced to 1906. The score is by Ludwig Minkus.

"Romeo and Juliet" is another story. Instead of Leonid Lavrovsky's celebrated production of the ballet, which the Bolshoi brought to Seattle four years ago, the company is bringing something from this century. Thank goodness. The old production, which served as a calling card for the company in the 1950s, was tired and in desperate need of refurbishing.

The new production was choreographed to Prokofiev's music by Radu Poklitaru, with stage direction by British theater director Declan Donnellan. Poklitaru has won a number of choreographic competitions and choreographed ballets in several countries that constituted the former Soviet Union.

Donnellan was born in England of Irish parents and attended Cambridge University. He has staged plays in London and New York, as well as in Finland, France (Avignon Festival), Russia and Austria (Salzburg Festival). His musical efforts include a "Falstaff" at Salzburg, with conductor Claudio Abbado and bass-baritone Bryn Terfel.

At the end of this season, after nearly 150 years in the same theater, the Bolshoi is moving next door to a new, and smaller, space while the old, glamorous house undergoes a long overdue $350 million renovation.