George Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which the critic Clive Barnes has called, "a fantasy spectacle of love," heats up the cold winter days from February 8 - 18, 2007 at the Citi Wang Theatre. This marks the first time that Boston Ballet will dance this production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Balanchine's first completely original full-length ballet, which was choreographed for New York City Ballet and premiered in January, 1962.

The original cast included Edward Villella as Oberon, Melissa Hayden as Titania, and Arthur Mitchell as Puck. A masterful combination of lucid storytelling and exquisite choreography, the ballet is danced to Mendelssohn's overture and incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, supplemented with various obscure works by the composer. The large cast includes 25 children from Boston Ballet School dancing the roles of bugs and fairies.

"Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the loveliest story ballets of the past 50 years," said Boston Ballet Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen. "The choreography is wonderfully inventive, and conveys Shakespeare's story with grace and humor. In addition to offering a variety of challenges to the Company, A Midsummer Night's Dream also provides students from Boston Ballet School with invaluable stage experience. The children are an integral part of the piece, and it's wonderful to be able to offer our students their first chance to dance in a Balanchine ballet."

Boston Ballet's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream features sets and costumes designed in 1997 for Pacific Northwest Ballet by Tony Award-winner Martin Pakledinaz. In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, dance writer R.M. Campbell said of Pakledinaz, "He sees Balanchine's choreography, married to Mendelssohn's lightly textured music, as magic that defies reason and stirs up passion." The critic Rita Felciano called the production "breathtaking." The original 1962 production featured sets by David Hays and costumes by Karinska, and their designs can still be seen at NYCB.

In the book Balanchine's Complete Stories of the Great Ballets, the choreographer said, "Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has always been a favorite of mine ever since I first saw it and appeared in the play as a child in Russia. I was an elf in a production at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg when I was about eight years old... But what has really interested me more than Shakespeare's words in recent years has been the music that Mendelssohn wrote to the play, and I think it can be said that the ballet was inspired by the score."

Act I is a witty interpretation of Shakespeare's play about love and illusion involving Titania and Oberon, the Queen and King of the Fairies; the sprite, Puck; and two pairs of mortal, mismatched lovers. The first act ends with all the principal players united with their proper partners, and the second act begins with a wedding procession and ceremony. The highlight of Act II is a long, lyrical pas de deux that seemingly has nothing to do with anything that's preceded it. But given Balanchine's intimate knowledge of the play, it's quite possible that the pas de deux is the equivalent of Bottom's dream. For Act II does not end with the pas de deux: it concludes with a return to the forest and the fairies, as Puck sweeps "the dust behind the door."

HISTORY OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Among the most frequently performed of Shakespeare's plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream was likely written in 1595 or 1596 and published for the first time in 1600. It is believed that the play was written for and first performed at a wedding celebration.

Shakespeare's comedy has inspired operas by Benjamin Britten and Henry Purcell (The Faerie Queen), and a 1939 jazz musical, Swingin' the Dream, which was choreographed by Agnes de Mille and featured the Benny Goodman Sextet and a cast that included Louis Armstrong as Bottom. There have been at least seven films, including a few silent movies. The most famous cinematic version is the 1935 film directed by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle, with a cast that includes James Cagney as Bottom, Mickey Rooney as Puck, Dick Powell as Lysander and Olivia de Havilland as Hermia.

The first known ballet based on the play dates back to an 1855 production at La Scala in Milan. It was choreographed by Giovani Corsati to music by Paolo Giorza, a composer of dozens of ballets. The first production danced to Mendelssohn's music was choreographed by Marius Petipa for the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1876. Since then, numerous choreographers have staged their own versions, including Mikhail Fokine (Maryinsky, 1906), Heinz Spoerli (Basel Ballet, 1975), John Neumeier (Hamburg Ballet, 1977), Uwe Scholz (Zurich, 1989) and Christopher Wheeldon (Colorado Ballet, 1997). Boston Ballet has previously danced Bruce Wells' A Midsummer Night's Dream, choreographed for the Company in 1986.

The two most eminent versions of the ballet are Balanchine's production and Sir Frederick Ashton's The Dream, a one-act piece choreographed in 1964 in honor of the quatercentenary of Shakespeare's birth. Like Balanchine, Ashton found a choreographic language to tell the story with great coherence, poetry and humor. The ballet featured Antoinette Sibley as Titania and Anthony Dowell as Oberon, launching one of the most illustrious dance partnerships of the 20th century. -- www.bostonballet.org