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[Alexandra]

Ballet Austin brought the first act of Stephen Mills' "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to the Kennedy Center Terrace Theatre tonight -- it's part of a series the Center has for families.  LOTS of kids in the audience, a whole band of little girls who came in together, all with ribbons and sparkles in their hair.  There were a lot of young elementary school children, so young (I am not making this up) they oohed when the Changeling Indian Boy came out!

I hadn't seen Mills's choreography before.  There were references to both the Ashton and Balanchine versions and the vocabulary was Balanchinean.  I thought the choreography for the small band of fairies (led by a kind of Head Fairy, named Cupid) was interesting; Mills' native language is ballet.  The Lovers segment was very slapstick, but much of it was quite funny.  There was quite a bit of mime, quite clearly delivered.  The dancers are what one would expect to see in a small company -- the women better than the men (several of the men looked as though they'd gotten late starts), but most with a technical or physical flaw.  (Titiana had karate arms.)

I wondered if anyone else had seen any of Mills' work?