The famed Teatro alla Scala Ballet will perform George Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," his first original, full-length work choreographed in 1962, with music by Felix Mendelssohn and story by Shakespeare, writes Michelle Qiao.

Shakespeare is so active on the Shanghai stage these days. "King Lear" just closed. The Disney Musical "The Lion King," an obvious "Hamlet" story, closed after 100 shows last month. Western dramas, Chinese ballets and even a Chinese movie have all tried to attract audiences with Shakespearian plots during the ongoing Shanghai International Arts Festival.

Now the historical Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company of Milan will stage Shakespeare's famous comedy, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," as the closing performance of the month-long arts festival.

The Scala version was created by the great Russian-American choreographer George Balanchine, who chose "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for his first original full-length work.

"When Balanchine choreographed it in 1962, he recalled that when he was a child, he had appeared as an elf in Shakespeare's play (not a ballet version) at the Mikhailovsky Theater in St Petersburg, Russia," says ballet expert Jeffrey Mo who is a huge fan of Balanchine.

"It was a play he knew in depth," says Mo. "This vision of a new dimension that went beyond the literal may suggest why he followed the storytelling of his first act with a vision of his own in act two: a pure-dance abstraction without words.

"He divides his ballet into two acts and does away with Shakespeare's idea of a play within a play. Yet even this plotless divertissement distills the play's overall theme of love and reconciliation. At its most elevated, this theme is rendered through classical dancing."

Felix Mendelssohn composed the overture and other incidental music for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in 1843. "But the music was not long enough for choreographer to work with," says Mo. "He (Balanchine) studied Mendelssohn's work intensively for 20 years before selecting the remaining music for the ballet he was to create."

Balanchine used other works by Mendelssohn including "Overture to Athalie, Son and Stranger," and "Overture to The Fair Melusine," "Symphony No. 9 for Strings" and "The First Walpurgis Night."

"So in a way, Balanchine started using symphonic work for a story ballet," says Mo.

Given in two acts and made up of six scenes, the theme of Balanchine's "Dream" is not far from that of the play, a comedy about the quarrels and reunions between a set of human lovers and the queen and king of the fairies.

The first act takes place in a forest beside the palace of Duke Theseus. King Oberon of the fairies and his queen Titania are quarreling over a page whom the king wishes to have for his entourage, but whom she is hiding from him.

The second act of the ballet follows events and opens in the sumptuous surroundings of Theseus's palace, with parades, dances and divertissements in honor of the newly reunited couples. Once the celebrations are over and the mortals leave, we find ourselves once more in the realm of Oberon and Titania, now peacefully together again.

The ballet was premiered in New York by the New York City Ballet on January 17, 1962. When the New York State Theater, purposely built for the New York City Ballet, opened in 1964, Balanchine's ballet was performed to open the company's first season at the theater in April 1964.

In 1967, the ballet was made into a movie with some of the most famous dancers of the New York City Ballet. To date, only two international companies, the New York City Ballet and the Teatro alla Scala Ballet have the rights to perform this choreography.

"I think Scala is the best ballet company in Italy and it's only ranked below the Royal Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet in Western Europe," says Mo.

The Scala ballet will use Balanchine's New York City Ballet version for the Shanghai show but with newly designed sets and costumes.

Designer Luisa Spinatelli has created a veritable feast of colors ranging from blue through green to pink, enabling us to see the forest populated by elves, gnomes and butterfly-fairies, as if viewing a majestic Grecian classicism in a neoclassical key.

With the efforts of the genius Balanchine and the Italian artists, the comedy will again give Shanghai a Shakespearian feast for both the eyes and the heart.

Date: November 16-18, 7:30pm
Venue: Shanghai Grand Theater, 300 People's Ave
Tickets: 120-880 yuan
Tel: 021-962-388