Reversing Midsummer: Alexander Ekman’s Dance-Theatre Adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This essay focuses on Alexander Ekman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an ambitious dance-theatre project that the renowned Swedish dancer and choreographer produced for the Royal Swedish Opera of Stockholm in 2015. Ekman’s performance “reverses” Shakespeare’s comedy by bringing on stage the traditional Swedish midsummer festival with its ring dances around the maypole, while mixing ballet with chants, popular rites and new technological devices. In my twofold analysis, I focus first on Ekman’s innovative choreographic “texture” which, despite the choreographer’s assertion that it is completely detached from Shakespeare’s story, is in reality a close reproduction or “play” between reality (Act I) and dream (Act II). Second, I show how drawing from Shakespearian themes, Ekman destabilises world dominator and patriarchal views in order to embrace imaginative partnership visions of reality (Eisler 1988), which have much to say about our most intimate and concealed truths.