Surely the birth of the Christ child was the most important moment in the marriage of Mary and Joseph, but that’s not all there was to their relationship, was it? Yeah, the kid does have a tendency to overshadow their romance in the historical accounts (see: the Bible), but what else was going on? Bere’Sheet Ballet’s Christmas! A Love Story has one possible answer. The ballet focuses on the young couple’s journey from innocent lovers to the parents of God — and especially on how difficult (and weird) it must have been for Joseph to be the earthly father of Christ.

Marie Plauché-Gustin, founder and choreographer of Bere’Sheet Ballet, chose to use that long-ago romance to comment on the current state of male/female relationships. “Because of the personal lives of a lot of the women in the [Bere’Sheet] company who had survived abusive relationships, I began to think of the Christmas story as a vehicle with which to show what God’s intent was in a relationship. I wanted to show a healthy relationship between a man and a woman. Sometimes crisis comes, as it certainly did to these two. How do you react to it?”

Don’t worry, you aren’t being tricked into attending a thinly disguised prayer meeting. “This is Christian in nature because it’s taken from the New Testament. We can’t avoid the fact that it does have to do with Jesus, but we always approach everything with a spiritual openness so that everyone will feel comfortable,” says Plauché-Gustin. “We try to do as excellent an artistic work as possible so that it will entertain even people who have no spiritual interest at all.”

A portion of the proceeds from Christmas! A Love Story will be donated to a women’s drastic needs fund. 7:30 p.m. today; 3 p.m. tomorrow. Jewish Community Center, 5601 South Braeswood Boulevard. For information, call 281-550-0002 or visit www.beresheetballet.org. $20.

Sat., Dec. 22, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Dec. 23, 3 p.m., 2007

This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2007.