To open its Melbourne winter season, The Australian Ballet has invited the handsome and talented Houston Ballet to make its Australian début in Romeo and Juliet by Houston's Australian artistic director, Stanton Welch. After reaching leading soloist and resident choreographer status in Australia, Welch joined Houston Ballet in 2003. He will always be remembered here for revolutionising balletic etiquette and contemporary design with Divergence, in 1994, and for his daring to make his first full-length ballet from Puccini's Madama Butterfly a year later. Welch now has a catalogue of some sixty works and five restaged classics (with a new Giselle on 9 June). Romeo and Juliet is his latest full-length creation. It is still very fresh; the Australian première was only its fifteenth performance since the world première in February 2015.