Ashton's The Dream (something that bothers)

[canbelto]

I've been watching my dual videos of Ashton's The Dream and Balanchine's Midsummer's Night Dream, and something about Ashton's version is really starting to bother me. Ironically, it's one of the most beautifully choreographed parts of the ballet -- the reconciliation pdd between Titania and Oberon. Balanchine uses the same music for the pdd between Titania and Bottom. The issue is, I think by choreographing this beautiful pdd between the Fairy Royals, Ashton is being ... well, unfaithful to Shakespeare. Balanchine cleverly never has Titania and Oberon dance together, I think, to show the adversarial relationship of the married fairies. To choreograph such a number showing connubial bliss IMO takes away one of Shakespeare's most clever jokes: that everyone in the play wants to get married, but the actual married couple (Titania and Oberon) quarrel constantly. Ashton was British, it's not as if he didnt know the play, but in this respect I think Balanchine had a much keener understanding of the Bard's gender politics.

Now I realize that The Dream is not Shakespeare, but I think on every level Balanchine's ballet is truer to the play. Not only structurally (splitting the action between the woods and the wedding in Athens) but psychologically. Balanchine understood the cheeky silliness of it all.

Sorry to have offended the many fans of The Dream, but has anyone ever felt bothered by Ashton's choice here?

[Helene]

Sorry to have offended the many fans of The Dream, but has anyone ever felt bothered by Ashton's choice here?

Yes. It's one of the reasons I don't like Ashton's version very much. The other reason is having the donkey en pointe. (Too cute for my taste.) I prefer the baudy, flea-scratching version of the donkey who can't quite believe his luck that a beautiful fairy could be interested in him (as donkey or Bottom) and is concurrently enamoured of her, becoming a real partner, and his dinner. So much psychological insight in one pas de deux, using such tender music!

[Mel Johnson]

Never bothered me, though. I suppose that it depends a lot on how the text is approached as to how chummy Titania and Oberon get after they patch things up. After all, as they say in Act 5:

OBERON

Through the house give gathering light,

By the dead and drowsy fire:

Every elf and fairy sprite

Hop as light as bird from brier;

And this ditty, after me,

Sing, and dance it trippingly.

TITANIA

First, rehearse your song by rote

To each word a warbling note:

Hand in hand, with fairy grace,

Will we sing, and bless this place.

[song and dance]

[Alexandra]

I don't think the point of it iis to show connubial bliss, though. Watch it again It's a very carefully choreographed conversation, the quarrel distilled into choreography; it's the contest of wills. He's insisting on being dominant, she resists, but eventually submits. And, as Mel quotes above (thank you!) the fairies' quarrel must be solved, or there will never be peace among mortals. So I'd say that's the point of Shakespeare's play, not an aberration. I'd also say, from what one reads about the way Ashton worked, he would made sure he understood that play to a depth that few others would reach. I know from the stories of "Romeo and Juliet" he had an image from the poetry for nearly every enchainement in that ballet.

[canbelto]

But there's a reconciliation in Balanchine's ballet, but the reconciliation is closer to Shakespeare: having been snookered by Oberon, Titania makes peace in the fairy kingdom. Balanchine makes the reconciliation a formal thing (her train and his train meet). But there's no telling when the next quarrel will pop up. Thus the essential joke (that the lovers want desperately to marry, but the only married couple in the piece arent particularly happy) is preserved.

It just seems as if The Dream is overall too optimistic and tender compared to Shakespeare. Balanchine just seems to understand the melding of silliness and romance much better. Not trying to start a MND vs. The Dream war, but I just noticed how closely Balanchine studied the psychology of the play, for someone not known for his "story" ballets. Ashton seems more determined to preserve the conventions of Romantic Ballet, but at the expense of Shakespeare.

Maybe it's a kind of imprinting effect, MND being one of the first ballets I saw in the theater, and one of my all-time favorites still. I just cant love The Dream as much after that.

[Alexandra]

All I can say is that in the Ashton, I think it's in the choreography, the actual steps. The surface of it looks like a Romantic ballet; that's deliberate, he set it in the time of the music. But with Ashton (with any great choreographer, I think) one has to go below the surface. (That doesn't mean you have to love it; it's not a matter of preference.) What you're saying you see in the Balanchine (and I agree) is exactly what I"m saying I see in the Ashton. It's just done differently.

[Leigh Witchel]

I take your points, but are we measuring "The Nutcracker" for its fidelity to E.T.A. Hoffman? (or for that matter, The Prodigal Son to the Book of Luke?) I think, like Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet, The Sleeping Beauty, etc, a ballet adaptation of a story becomes its own entity, with its own world and its own logic. Of all the Romeo and Juliets I have ever seen, by far the weakest version was the one most faithful to Shakespeare - the choreographer was trying to cram Shakespeare's narrative into Prokofiev's score. Sorry, can't be done. Still, if you love the original material, it 's understandable to be disappointed when there's a departure.

[carbro]

I concur with Leigh (and, btw, Helene). Literature and dance give us different things, and when a choreographer distills a verbal property (for lack of a better word) into a nonverbal one, it's a matter of what aspects of the former s/he selects to comment upon. You can be literal, but only to a point (no "e").

Mothers-in-law in ballet, e.g.

[richard53dog]

Truly, it's not possible to carry forward all the complicated details of most plays, particularly Shakespeare's.

To stay on this story base, but with a switch to another genre, I think Britten did himself in with trying to encompass too many details into his own Midsummer Night's Dream. The third act is drawn waaaaaay out.

Ashton or Balanchine. There are two different intents here in my opinion. Ashton tried to create a period piece, a psuedo Romantic, slightly artificial, piece.

Balanchine, as he often does, takes something from another era, patterns, steps, in rare cases , stories and brings a modern sensibilty to them . Do we REALLY believe Titania and Oberon will have a future without any waves or bumps?

Today's mentality would say "not likely". I'm not convinced Shakespeare wasn't saying the same thing. He certainly was a master of saying one thing with a distinct contradiction as an undercurrent.

So time will tell which piece will have a more viable future. Personally, I like both pieces, but enjoy Balanchine's extra dash of wit as an added garnish

[canbelto]

I think Balanchine compresses the story as much as Ashton -- he completely leaves out Bottom and his troupe's "performance" at the wedding and all the Athens stuff in the first act. What Balanchine DOES do IMO (not to beat a dead horse) is really understand the spirit of Shakespeare. It's sort of like the Plato idea of "essence" -- when I watch Ashton, I have to mentally click off the part of me that read and reread and attended several productions of the play. I have to say, Ok, this is a ballet, and I have to accept that, and enjoy it for what it is. With Balanchine I feel his ballet was so closely within the spirit of the play that when I read MND or attend a play at the local theater, I imagine in my head the vision of Bottom scratching his "bottom" while making love to Titania, or the mime of Puck and the four lovers.

It's just that when I read reviews of The Dream I inevitably read things like Ashton's "English sensibility" and "understanding of Shakespeare" and perhaps it annoys me more than it should that Ashton deviates from the play by romanticizing one of the play's most clever but heartless jokes. Of course other people might feel differently, and that the reconciliation pdd is also supported in the text.

But I guess I'm lucky that we have both ballets in the repertoire

[Leigh Witchel]

I have a feeling this could be local preference/prejudice, even the feeling that Balanchine hews to the spirit of the play more closely. I started out preferring Midsummer's (while loving Ashton's Fairies). It's taken me a while to get The Dream - the final hurdle for me was accepting how Ashton uses music (theatrically, not symphonically). We're used to Balanchine; he trained our eyes and ears to expect certain things. Ask someone from the UK how they feel; you'll get the reverse answer.

Nowadays, when the stars are aligned properly and the performances are good, I prefer the one I saw last!

[Ari]

Ashton's Dream has a consciously Victorian sensibility. I think he was aiming for the sort of cozy entertainment you might have found in the 19th century, and a Bowdlerized version of Shakespeare, one more suited to conventional Victorian ideas, would be in keeping with that.

[Jane Simpson]

I think there are many different ways of interpreting the play, from 'cheeky silliness' to cynical misogyny, and it would be amazing if Ashton and Balanchine saw it the same way. Similarly, it's evident that people see Ashton's ballet very differently: far from being bowdlerized or romantic, the big pas de deux looks to me as if it's about reconciliation (possibly quite temporary) through glorious sex. (After all, quarrelling and making-up seems to be some couples' idea of connubial bliss.)

I don't think Bottom is particularly cute, if it's being done properly; Puck on the other hand is a pain - but so he is in any medium, if you ask me, even in the Britten, which I love.