Photos courtesy of Performing Arts Houston
Tired of crowded bars, and expensive Halloween costumes? This October, a different kind of celebration is taking over Houston’s Theatre District. Specifically, a celebration where enormous unruly fish, the shadows of love and a stage full of hay invite audiences to a dreamlike experience.
Presented by Performing Arts Houston at Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, The Joffrey Ballet’s Ekman’s Midsummer Night’s Dream transforms a Swedish summer celebration into an otherworldly experience. The performance offers students and young adults a theatrical alternative to the usual Halloween festivities.
Pre-show activities
The evening begins before the curtain rises. Guests are invited to wear white, the traditional garment of the Midsummer festival which celebrates the summer solstice. The first 500 guests are given a flower crown, then enter a fantastic party in the grand lobby.
Before the show starts, guests walk across red carpets toward their seats, where a man lies asleep in a bed on stage. A sequence awakens him, the curtain rises, and the stage becomes a playground of movement and music.
Enough hay to cover the entire stage sets the scene for more than 50 dancers. The material acts as an expansion of the motion of the dancers’ bodies. Hence, there is beautiful, synchronized drama with each fling, throw and sweep. The hay looks beautiful catching the beams of the warm midsummer “sun,” a dense cluster of spotlights facing the stage.
The sheer scale of the production is striking. Layers of activity unfold across the stage, creating a constantly shifting tableau of life, art and motion. The choreography invites the eye to wander, rewarding attention to the smallest details as much as the grand spectacle.
A simpe grill cook who was off to the side becomes the first dancer stripped of costume. When he glides onto the stage as the first dancer featured en pointe, the impact is huge. Then comes intermission.
A shift in aura
The traditional imagery in act one shifts to high speed lighting and an unsettling soundscape. A glitching clock reveals that the Midsummer festival has ended, and the dream begun. The shift is deliberate.
Joffrey Ballet Artistic Director Ashley Wheater explains the need to let the audience experience the production on its own terms, “You have to trust that people will trust act one to see the full effect that it has on act two.”
Absurdism, high-concept choreography and dazzling set pieces propel the audience into a dream sequence that is both exhilarating and unnerving.
The clock glitches through the passage of time, linking the midsummer party to the dream and the cycle that brings the celebration back around again.
Headless men in suits appear. Two enormous fish wreak havoc among the dancers. A high-concept sequence of a couple engaged in romance dazzles using time and shadow as medium.
Remarks from the creators
Choreographer Alexander Ekman says “Everything is possible in a dream.. at the same time, it’s extremely hard to finish. Our dreams never end.. so how do you end a theatrical dream?”
The production’s musical storytelling is equally distinctive. Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson and Ekman sought out Anna von Hausswolff, an indie rock artist whose haunting presence gives the ballet another dimension.
Describing her role, von Hausswolff calls herself “the storyteller and the contemplator,” occupying the space between participant and observer. She states that “I’m a foreigner and a friend. I’m a mythological creature telling the story of tradition, celebration and love.”
After the production, audience members are invited to stay and move closer to the stage, where both artistic director Wheater and composer Karlsson speak on the production and take questions. Karlsson welcomed the audience’s enthusiasm, stating, “I so loved that you all have dressed for the occasion.”
The Houston engagement also carries a sense of homecoming. The Joffrey Ballet is returning to Jones Hall for the first time in 12 years, joining Performing Arts Houston’s 60th Anniversary Diamond Season.
Wheater, who performed at Jones Hall during his own dancing career, praised the venue’s renovations for making the experience more immersive, with the stage “going into the audience, rather than being separated from it.”
“Our history is deep and important and we are just thrilled to be here,” Karlsson says. Houston audiences have only three performances to experience the production before it moves on to Paris, making the engagement a limited opportunity to see the ambitious work in person.
For students seeking something memorable beyond Halloween nightlife, Ekman’s Midsummer Night’s Dream offers an evening of unexpected humor, surreal beauty and world class dance.
Between the flower crowns, the cascading hay and the dreamlike spectacle, it is a reminder that celebrating this Halloween season can mean celebrating the cyclical nature of season itself.
Check out other events coming to Houston’s Jones Hall.
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