Nearly 400 years after his death, hope still springs eternal for William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," that pinnacle of romantic tragedies that has provided innumerable offshoots on stage and opera, in music and film.

There is currently more than a flurry of star-cross'd lovers on the horizon: Choreographer Mark Morris premiered a new version this past summer at Bard College, using Prokofiev's original 1935 score that added an extra 15 minutes of music and offered a politically incorrect happy ending that brought wrath from Russian officials.

And the author of the original Broadway book of "West Side Story," 90-year-old director Arthur Laurents, will produce a radically different production scheduled for December at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., and opening on Broadway early next year. Laurents' new vision plays up the immigration issue and makes it "selectively" bilingual.

Locally, we saw Pittsburgh CLO's production this summer and can savor Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre's emotionally charged ballet by Jean-Christophe Maillot in February.

Ballet Maribor, the opening event for both the Pittsburgh Dance Council season and the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts this week, could be considered the eye of this most romantic storm.

But the gestation of Ballet Maribor's notable contemporary ballet, called "Radio and Juliet," has less to do with Shakespeare than most. Slovenian choreographer Edward Clug was instead inspired by English rockers Radiohead.

Clug, 35, had only created a pair of full-length ballets, both using original music, but he had long been a fan of Radiohead's music. While choreographing a duet for a ballet competition, he chose a selection from the album "Amnesiac."

"That was the starting point," he acknowledges, because the lyrics and music reminded him of "Romeo and Juliet." Further exploration provided the "right atmosphere" for Clug's first foray into what might be deemed a story ballet.

His interpretation uses one woman and six men, just enough to convey that atmosphere, provide Shakespeare's touch points and translate them into dance. With this method, Clug allows the audience to "discover the story from a different perspective," and it has proved to be a breakthrough ballet for both him and his company.

There could be comparisons to Baz Luhrmann's punk movie version, "Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet," with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Clug was aware of the movie, which uses several Radiohead tunes, but says his ballet is "a reflection of my private life."

Unlike Luhrmann's use of Wagner and alternative rock and pop music, Clug sticks to Radiohead, with selections from the textured guitar atmosphere of "The Bends" and the expansive sound of "OK Computer" to the guitar-driven rock and electronics of "Hail to the Thief."

What emerges is still a recognizable essence of Shakespeare -- the fight sequences, Romeo's dance with his friends, the famed balcony duet, the couple's marriage.

But Clug goes beyond the familiar, tapping Shakespeare's universal themes of love, friendship and violence and forming a new pas de deux between the desperation and alienation of Radiohead's music and the movement personified by Juliet.