Less than four weeks into the 2014-2015 school year, the Mountlake Terrace High School Drama Department is already hard at work on its first production – and it is a surprising undertaking, a dance/movement interpretation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Performances are slated for Friday and Saturday, Sept. 26 and 27, at the Mountlake Terrace High School Theatre; the curtain rises each night at 7 p.m. Ticket prices are only $5, with proceeds going to support the MTHS Drama Program.

The MTHS students have been working on the production with Stanko Milov, Executive Director of Global Organization for Arts & Leadership (GOAL) and former principal dancer with Pacific Northwest Ballet and Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.

Students have met with Milov for what may seem like an impossibly short time: two-and-a-half weeks for three hours-a-day after school. However, the short time frame for training sessions and rehearsals is one of the key elements of this collaboration; it’s a project to challenge students to stretch their expectations of themselves, to work creatively as a team, to develop leadership skills, to trust themselves in positive experiences that may be outside their comfort zone and to become more self-aware.

The production is the end result of GOAL’s Team-Building Performing Arts & Leadership “Theatre-Movement” workshop that the drama students of MTHS are completing, and will include original choreography by Milov set to the music of Sergei Prokofiev, Frederic Chopin, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

“I am amazed to see how beautifully this production has developed,” MTHS Drama teacher Jeannie Brzovic said. “Stanko has been able to help my students to cultivate the confidence to perform a complex Shakespearian tragedy with grace and professionalism. Many of my students have little or no experience in dance, certainly not ballet, and yet Stanko has been able to make them look like they have been dancing for years. I am very excited for the student’s family and friends, as well as our community to see what they have accomplished.”

For more information about the production call 425-431-5621.