Sogno di una notte di mezza estate

Coreography MAURO BIGONZETTI
Original music: ELVIS COSTELLO
Set design: FABRIZIO PLESSI
Stage version: NICOLA LUSUARDI
Costume design: GUGLIELMO CAPONE
Lighting design: CARLO CERRI

Theseus, Hippolyta, Oberon, the craftsmen, Titania, Hermia, the fairies, Lysander, Helena, Puck, Demetrius.... A fantastic world that materialises in the mind of anyone who reads "A Midsummer Night’s Dream", one of the most visionary plays ever written. A world swirling with intrigues, strange surroundings and interwoven story lines that end up bewildering even the most attentive reader. Here we see the imaginative power of Shakespeare who is cynical and scoffing, sly and humorous. Three small separate worlds, three levels of reality that change and cross each other like a puzzle interwoven in the plot. There is the mythological world of the court, the unreal and timeless world of the fairies, and the concrete world of the lovers or, even more, of the craftsmen. They offer the choreographer the opportunity to use different vocabularies of movement, to experiment and to make diverse techniques mutually compatible. This creates a more elemental dance that can be seen in the smallest detail of the choreography. It is not the pantomime element that interests us in this work, but the desire to have a true "mise en scène" of a text that stimulates and draws upon all of the elements of theatre, that strives to give direction to the action, that produces a feeling of alternating between order and chaos, reality and fantasy. The driving force for all of the above is desire. Relationships are seen as a type of game tied to a mysterious power that judges and controls; irrational and elusive desires that determine how we feel, that can deeply change the makeup of our world and create new harmonies and balance. This is as it is in that fairy inhabited forest, labyrinth like, in which lovers are lost, in which everybody, without realising it, have become simple pawns moved by an invisible hand and in which all the cards can be re-dealt at any moment.
Mauro Bigonzetti

Produced for BOLOGNA 2000 European Capital of Culture
co-produced with Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Scène nationale - Theater Im Pfalzbau, Ludwigshafen
In collaboration with I Teatri, Reggio Emilia

World premiere:
Bologna, Teatro Comunale
31 October 2000

French premiere:
Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Scène nationale
29 March 2001

German premiere:
Ludwigshafen, Theater im Pfalzbau
22 November 2001

USA premiere:
Orange County, Performing Arts Center
19 July 2002

Ballet for the entire Company