Redoing Romeo: Mark Morris take on the ballet classic, but with his own spin.

And you thought there was nothing new for a choreographer to say about Romeo and Juliet. How about going back to the Shakespeare tragedy? Or, how about using the original version of the beloved Prokofiev score? When Bard College's president and conductor Leon Botstein approached Mark Morris with the project, his answer dripped with sarcasm. "Sure," the choreographer responded, "how about the Romeo with the happy ending?"

In fact, that was exactly what Botstein was talking about, and this month at Bard's SummerScape Festival, the enlightened Morris will spearhead a historic project. In Romeo and Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare, 22 current and former members of the Mark Morris Dance Group will introduce the version that the composer and his dramatist Sergei Radlov intended when the score was written in 1935.

In the original score, recently unearthed in Moscow, the lovers do not die, but remove themselves from society in a final duet that Morris calls "transcendent" in tone. For the famous 1940 Leonid Lavrovsky production, however, the Kirov authorities cut Prokofiev's final act and decided that the ballet should have a tragic ending (as per Shakespeare). They also thickened the orchestration, which, to Morris, sounds "too John Williamsy," like a Hollywood movie theme.

Do not expect this Romeo to resemble the spectacular versions by Kenneth MacMillan and John Cranko with which most Americans are familiar. Morris' Romeo will restore Prokofiev's more intimate, original instrumentation, rearrange the music in the composer's desired order, and include six sections that have never been previously choreographed. The balcony scene, Morris notes, is much more concise than what we see in other stagings; Romeo doesn't get a variation. "The show is very rough and very much not a ballet," says Morris.

He has done his homework. "I hadn't read the play for 30 years. It's better than I remember it," says Morris. "It's also dirtier than I remember, so sexy and completely direct." Morris' choreography will not focus on the class struggle elements that make the old Soviet versions look dramatically dated. "The theme of the play is the destructive power of the vendetta in the 15th century. It's so much East L.A.," Morris suggests. This version will include Shakespearean characters, like the leaders of the Montagues, usually omitted from other dance versions.

Morris' research has taken him down some unusual paths. "I've been studying manuals of Italian Renaissance hand gestures--so fabulous," he says. "You may think that giving somebody the finger was invented when you were a teenager, but of course, it goes way back."

Morris began setting Romeo on his "genius dancers" with the group episodes "to get the tone of the thing," and members of MMDG have taken fencing lessons. Since the piece calls for a huge cast of characters, there will be much doubling and tripling of parts for the dancers, with women sometimes assuming men's roles. That, of course, is the opposite of what happened with the all-male acting companies of Shakespeare's era.

With seven commissioning partners and bookings through next summer, this is the MMDG's most grandiose project in its 27-year history. Morris sounds a mite apologetic.

"I am taking big risks in violating what people are used to hearing and seeing with Romeo," the choreographer says. "But I think it will be worth it."

Romeo and Juliet will be performed July 4-9 at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. www.bard.edu/fishercenter. For a complete performance schedule, visit www.lovelives.net.