Nobles, fairies, and amusing mechanicals...
The dreamlike, festive ballet that expresses the Three Worlds created by the magic of the Bard's words in three dance styles and with three genres of music

Photo：Holger Badekow

A Midsummer Night's Dream, staged by John Neumeier when he was just 35, is a dazzlingly festive ballet that gives form to the worlds of Shakespeare's famous comedy through a young choreographer's exuberant creativity and raw emotion.

The likes of Ashton and Balanchine had already produced great pieces within the ballet world based on the same play. What is notable about Neumeier's version is that the choreographer devised a way of more faithfully expressing the view of the world that Shakespeare painted with his words.

The inhabitants of the three worlds--the down-to-earth people, the comical Mechanicals, and the mystical fairies--each express themselves through entirely different music and dancing. The betrothed Athenian nobles Theseus and Hippolyta, as well as the two other couples, perform a stately classical dance to Mendelssohn's bright score. Bottom and the other merry Mechanicals, attempting to stage a play at Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding, play primitive barrel organs and perform comical sketches. Finally, the forest-dwelling fairy king and queen, as well as their servants, dance, with a great deal of jumping and dynamic lifting, to Ligeti's mysterious electronic tones.

In the climactic wedding scene, following the courtiers' dance and the Mechanicals' farce, the occasion concludes with a bright pas de deux by Theseus and Hippolyta, appearing entirely as the grand finale of a classical ballet. However, the subsequent epilogue, featuring Oberon and Titania, vividly illustrates that this bright reality is underpinned by the power of "The Dream." This masterpiece weaves Shakespeare's worlds into a single dreamlike tapestry of different styles of performance in a spectacular work of ballet. It is not to be missed!