Assistant professor Thang Dao (Dance) premiered his new ballet The Seventh Night Sky with Ballet Austin TWO on Oct. 10 at Ballet Austin's AustinVentures StudioTheater. Commissioned by The Bancroft Initiative, the 45-minute work is the third chapter of Ballet Austin's Fables of the World series, which pairs a treasured story from a given culture with a choreographer native to that culture. Dao's ballet draws on the Vietnamese legend of Ngưu Lang and Chức Nữ — the cowherd and the weaver girl, known in astronomy as Altair and Vega — and on his graduate research in Asian folklore, blending classical ballet, contemporary movement and Vietnamese dance vocabulary. The score was composed by Duy Tran and James G. Lindsay, with a featured aria performed by Grammy-winning soprano Sangeeta Kaur (Teresa Mai). The production ran for eight performances across two weekends and was accompanied by Ballet Austin's school-show program, which brings standards-aligned curricula to Pre-K through grade 8 students at no cost to participating schools.