Garth Grimball
CalPerformances’ 2025–2026 dance season started with a bang and went out with a bang. Paris Opera Ballet took the Zellerbach Hall stage in early October with lavish sets, costumes by Chanel, and live music for their Red Carpet. On April 17, Joffrey Ballet performed Alexander Ekman’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, showcasing one of the grandest production designs seen on that or any Bay Area stage all season.
Ekman’s production has nothing to do with Shakespeare’s comedy, nor does it make use of Mendelssohn’s score. The title is more of a hook to entice viewers into a jam-packed summer-idyll-meets-A24-esque-nightmare rooted in Swedish midsummer festivities, but it’s most deeply reflective of Ekman’s artistic voice than any narrative or cultural touchstone.
The theater house was bathed in green and twinkle lights extended out from proscenium’s apex. In front of the curtain was a single-sized bed. Dylan Gutierrez climbed under the sheets and laid in repose as the audience entered and chattered. A marquee with a glowing date and clock set a temporal mood: Friday, June 19 2026, hours before the summer solstice. Victoria Jaiani flitted down the aisle and onto the stage to wake this dreamer, get him dressed and prepared to enter the surreal. The curtain rose to deliver one of the most striking theatrical scenes I’ve seen in recent memory.
The stage was a sea of hay. The full company was on their knees throwing the flaxen threads to and fro, high in the air, covering and revealing the depth of bodies on stage. Mikael Karlsson’s score was equally jubilant. The two violins, viola, cello, piano and percussion created a rollicking melody. The festivities were intermittently interrupted or heightened by Swedish indie-pop musician Anna von Hausswolff. One song repeated throughout the performance with the questioning chorus:
“Had it all been a dream? Had it all been a blunder?
And who was that foreign girl/With a song made in thunder?”
The aestival orgy was swept away as more banal activities took over. A man pushed a grill out to the downstage corner. A group collected under an event tent and swayed back and forth as if reacting to weather with slapstick energy. A giant maypole structure rolled out and two men slid underneath it to hardcore make out.
The sun-drunk ensemble passed wine glasses around and danced in concentric circles around the maypole. The revelers lined up at the lip of the stage in silence, waiting…for us? Several rounds of applause met their expectant gaze and nervy shifts. A mimed cheers relieved the tension and on they went about their merry way. The clock raced forward and the date glitched. A slow-motion procession brought out a long dining table, and all the flower-crowned returned with candelabras. The fete continued at a humid pace. A pantsless man stumbled. Act one ended with the date and time unfixed and candelabras carried into the audience.
Act one was a lot of moving but not a lot of dancing. Act two returned as an inversion, possibly a nightmare version of the previous activity. The warm light was cold. The stage mostly barren. A bed floated in the sky. Three sets of male-female couples rolled into each other, stretching and curling into maximal contact. Any post-coital bliss was denied as a hard tack into the absurd took over. A man wearing only a toque and chef’s apron bouree’d across the stage, cheeks pulsing. A limp fish fell from the sky and a giant fish head gobbled up stage left. The dining table rose into the air with a few diners attached. Motifs from act one continued to reappear askew or irrational. Ekman lost the plot of his ballet about halfway through the second act when a dancer walked onto stage with a sign that read “Theater Dream.” We’re not in Midsummer anymore, Toto.
Eschewing any of his previous theatrical conceits, Ekman staged the most exciting dancing of the production. A powerful ensemble of women danced en pointe in unison. Arabesque and attitude struck through the space as they pounced on each diagonal and pushed their arms to the sides. This most aerobic moment gave way to a centipedal crisscrossing of the stage. Gutierrez and Jaiani danced a pas de deux that included a fish lift over a stuffed fish. (Ekman has never been an artist of subtleties.)
This Midsummer ended as it began with a man in bed in front of the curtain and a woman racing in to wake him. After abandoning the show’s central themes during the “Theater Dream” section, this ending felt like a batter sliding into home plate after skipping third base.
Dramaturgically, this show is a bit of a mess. But in the mess the dancers are given opportunities to flex all of their performance skills: technique, acting, prop work, audience interaction, stage fighting and kissing. And while it may have been more fun to dance than to watch, I love big swings and I love seeing big money spent on dance. Ekman’s Midsummer may not be a dream, but it is a gift.
Garth Grimball is a writer and dancer based in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to Fjord Review, SF Examiner and Dance Media. He is the editor of ODC Dance Stories.
Joffrey Ballet Dances A Horny, Haywire “Midsummer” was originally published in ODC.dance.stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.