A premiere of «A Midsummer Night’s Dream» choreographed by John Neumeier went off in Moscow on Christmas Eve. The fine beautiful ballet (scene designer Jurgen Roze) that combines German humor and refined French charm of dancing is indisputably fitting the Bolshoi stage. It is the best performance produced here for some time past.

John Neumeier is an aesthetic singer of a choreographic saga, writing out a psychological orchestration of the performance with the German pedantry and punctuality. Neumeier creates many-voiced opuses-fugues from legendary literary plots-preludes subordinating with virtuosity dramatic collisions and original narrative greed to the laws of dance counterpoint. His credo is musicality, high calligraphy and aristocratism of inexhaustible fantasy. The world of his choreographic dreams is a sublimation of Hellenistic body beauty and mythological spirit harmony.

Neumeier produced over one hundred ballets. Nowadays there isn’t any well-known ballet company in the world which hasn’t or doesn’t dream to have any Neumeier’s ballet in its repertoire.

Talks with Neumeier about producing for Bolshoi lasted for a long time. The choreographer should find a suitable ballet for the Bolshoi stage, select dancers, after all, find the time which he has assigned literally day for day for some years in the future. When Neumeier saw the Bolshoi ballet company on tour in Paris and London, it became clear for him that in such a large actor ensemble of the striking stage characters he should start producing with the ballet «A Midsummer Night’s Dream». This is some kind of the modern classic ballet (the premiere was in Hamburg, 1977), which has been going on at ballet stages of Paris, Vienna, Milan, Munich, Copenhagen, Stockholm for a long time. In Hamburg the ballet has been shown for two hundred and fifty times already. Neumeier’s idea is demonstrating the fact that ballet companies can work as the real Theater displaying a great number of characters in all their style dancing variety. There are complicated movements and complicated partnership in the ballet, but its main challenge consists in the certain limits for the actors of the Bolshoi who get so much accustomed to the acting. Here they should work in the new situation and submit to the efficient structure of the ballet with characters and staging worked out in detail. And by there they find the improvised freedom.

All the corps de ballet is taken up in the ballet. It embodies some different levels: the aristocratic world, the cosmic world of fairies, Titania and Oberon, the world of the artisans, who wedge themselves brutally into the sensual empyreans. The music is accordingly selected: Felix Mendelssohn (the music for the performance «A Midsummer Night’s Dream»), avant-garde composer Gyorgy Ligeti (composition «Volumina» for organ and music for cembalo), as well as the melodies adapted for street-organ and mechanical piano of our forefathers’ times. The space of music is a three-dimensional one: an orchestra sounds from the pit; the cosmic music sounds from everywhere; the artisans have their music sound just from the street-organ at the stage.

All is going on according to Shakespeare in this ballet about the reverses of love, but the Greek theme of Athens has been cast away. The European court of the nineteenth century becomes the scene of action. The choreographer sets a comedy of situations as an aesthetic tangle of night dreams. Here in the ballet the dream is mixed with the reality, the magic wood of the rustling trees settled with the fairies wearing synthetic tights and bathing caps comes to life (seemingly it has been done to spite Marius Petipa whose fairies wore fluffy tutus). The fairies soar in the state of cosmic weightlessness and narcotic nirvana. Their beautiful bodies are an outcome of the metaphysical mist and the age-long sadness. In the same place Puck the elf plays pranks with the red rose smell of which stupefies everybody. Under the hypnotic influence of the flower the heroes get free from all the complexes and taboo, and anyone risks falling in love with the first comer. The confusion takes place: two loving couples get mixed being induced into comical situations. Neumeier displays the main heroine Hippolyta in all aspects: here she is an aristocratic lady married the duke Theseus, and here she is a feminist contending with Oberon on equal grounds. Her eroticism in the look of Titania is given in the relation with an artisan-macho who turned into an attractive donkey.

It is extremely funny to see the scene with the artisans who perform the divertissement «Pyramus and Thisbe» at the main heroes’ wedding. Music from «La Traviata» by Verdi sounds on the street-organ, the artisans Quince, Starveling, Snout and Snug represent Moonlight, Lion and Wall. Flute gets up on the points, takes on switches and a dress, and Bottom the weaver takes on the armor. In short, there is much where the Bolshoi actors can display themselves, the more so Neumeier doesn’t renew his Hamburg version of the ballet in conformity with the Bolshoi stage, but he takes into account the individuality of the new performers, changes the tracery of the dance and creates the original interpretations of the parts.

The Moscow «Dream» can be considered as made according to the Hamburg account if it were not for two «buts»… In the first place, the artisans (I mean the premiere cast) who were called up to take away the love inspiration and relieve the slow classical tension totally ruined their staging. Using all well-known cliches of «naphthalene» pantomime they looked insincere and witless. The actors were found to be strangers to improvisation and humor. Each time having a chance to see «A Midsummer Night’s Dream» executed by the actors of the Paris Opera and the Hamburg Ballet I was surprised by how the actors performing the parts of the artisans found a great number of colors and delicate nuances laughable to colic in the stomach. Moreover, from performance to performance they introduced new and new details, «add-ones» and «tools» for which not only the spectators but their colleagues by stage were waiting without making secret of the fact.

And I’d like to say some more in addition. The ocean of sensuality is spread all over the performance but eroticism is unfortunately unfamiliar to the actors of the Bolshoi, as if the ballet was produced at the times we had no sex. And if Ivan Urban didn’t come from the Hamburg Ballet Company and perform the part of Lisander our Hermia (Maria Alexandrova) and Helena (Nina Kaptsova) would still remain «Turgenev’s girls».
And here I want to take my hat off to the female corps de ballet. The dancers execute «cosmic traceries» with the sense of style and skill as if they danced the choreography by Neumeier all their life long. Nelli Kobakhidze is especially notable for the beauty of her body lines. Yan Godovsky as Puck is irreproachably stylish and punctilious. Titania and Oberon performed by Svetlana Zakharova and Nikolai Tsiskaridze are the two ex-libris silhouettes of the dance. Like virtual cosmonauts in the turbans and diving-dresses they embody a melancholic dream on the lost paradise. This most beautiful couple has no equal all over the world! In the ballet that is new for them the actors demonstrate their extraordinary physical qualities in all their glory, only one thing they are missing is feeling drawn to each other. As for Tsiskaridze himself he will have to find stability in performing solos and duets. And also he should think on the appropriateness of a certain gag destroying Neumeier’s aestheticism. In particular if an aristocrat has to wrap up his small of the back with the bride’s train at the wedding in the palace or to flirt with the artisans luring Snug-Lion like poultry at the poultry farm.

Ivan Urban brings to the performance vital notes of happiness, love and youth feeling complete comfort at the insidious stage of the Bolshoi Theater. His naturalness and going over the scale eroticism strike his female partners on the spot. He kisses Hermia long and hard, covers Helena’s thighs with pushing kisses, wins the hearts with the plenty of the male tenderness. His authentic performing multiplied by the actor’s charm makes him be the key-figure of the acting episodes. Maria Alexandrova whose energetic temperament is the dominating color of her part flourishes in his adroit hands.

A comic couple Helena and Demetrius (Nina Kaptsova and Vladimir Neporozhny) vividly diversifies the palette of the characters introducing to the performance the motives of buffoonery and grotesque. Here the dancers whose acting points were unobtrusive have been able to appear as full-blooded personages at last! It would be advisable to add still more courage. For all that it is rather hard to throw off the memorable impressions made on me before by the performers of the most striking personalities at the same parts.

The important condition of the good performance is the accuracy of the performers. Unfortunately all the performers without exception are not flawless in technique, someone to the greater degree, another one to the smaller degree. For the present they don’t execute pirouettes neatly, sometimes they spoil supports, the cantilena connection of movements don’t come easy to them. There is an effort in their performing Neumeier’s cultivated chicaneries which would be enough for the whole two performances; the actors also feel discomfort in the quick tempos. A great initial work with the company has been done by the assistants to choreographer Radik Zaripov and Victor Hughes. Let’s be in hopes that it won’t go to waste and «A Midsummer Night’s Dream» at the Bolshoi will become really magic.