Photo By David Sorcher

Principal dancer Kristi Capps and other dancers prepare for the Cincinnati Ballet's A Midsummer Night's Dream, presented at the Aronoff Center's Procter & Gamble Hall on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Is it drama or is it dance? Cincinnati Ballet kicks off its season this weekend with a charming marriage of the two in A Midsummer Night's Dream. This production, choreographed by the Artistic Director Victoria Morgan and premiered in 2002, is her first full-length ballet created "from scratch" since arriving as the ballet's artistic leader. But there's more that sets this show apart from your average night at the ballet -- or the theater.

There's no denying A Midsummer Nights Dream's popularity. It's reputedly Shakespeare's most performed play. The legendary 20th-century ballet choreographer George Balanchine felt sufficiently inspired to create an evening-length work of it in 1962. Morgan actually performed Balanchine's version during her time as a dancer with San Francisco Ballet.

How and why did she decide to develop her own interpretation? Surely Balanchine was a tough act to follow. The imaginative setting, the charming, almost cartoonish characters and the musical score were all attractions for Morgan. She also likes the structure.

"It's actually a good piece for someone who has not seen very much dance," she points out, "because it very clearly tells a story."

Describing Balanchine's version with evident adoration and fond memories, Morgan cites several contrasts: His rendition contains many lovely divertissements and perhaps more additional tangents off the basic plot. She says he took a different approach. Although both versions share the rather short, 40-minute musical score composed by Felix Mendelssohn, Morgan had the freedom to incorporate additional music -- while avoiding Balanchine's musical choices. She stuck with Mendelssohn, opting for some of the composer's lush string symphonies and choral compositions. Calling his music "jubilant, yet sophisticated," she adds, "I really relate to him. He's got a lot of really fun rhythms and ideas in his music. You can pick up so many different kinds of accents ... this brings a lot of freedom to the choreography."

Ironically, she felt the best way to "make it her own" was to remain faithful to -- even "cling to" -- Shakespeare's play. Considering the playwright's affinity for character depth and plot complexities, this presented a challenge. So she brought in an expert: D. Lynn Meyers, producing artistic director at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC).

When the work was created in 2002, Meyers came on board as a dramaturg, a somewhat unorthodox move for a dance production. Morgan explains, "I think the place often where choreography is weak is in the telling of the story -- really maintaining the integrity of how the narrative should unfold, of what those characters really should be and how they should change, and then how you should see that in the movement."

Morgan had worked with Meyers before, occasionally having provided choreography for ETC's holiday shows. Morgan jokingly thought, "Well, she owes me!" Seriously, she remarked, "I asked Meyers to be a part of this project because I know she's a wonderful theater director. She immediately had some great ideas."

Morgan describes their collaboration, "It's an interesting process to work with someone to evolve a sequence and a narrative. Probably it's in part because I don't do that -- that's not my background, that's not my experience ... I would be interested in feedback.

"There would be times when I'd think, 'Oh, I've just invented the most wonderful little sequence, this lovely little step', and the dramaturge would say, 'Well, that's not really in keeping with the character.' And then I'd have to throw that step away. But I needed somebody to tell me that because I wouldn't want to throw that step away."

Morgan trusted Meyers' "nice sense of movement," which she had noticed in plays Meyers had directed. Besides helping to clarify the story's structure -- and assisting a bit with choreographic editing -- Meyers brought in copies of the play for the dancers to read and better understand their characters.

Although A Midsummer Night's Dream contains plenty of intricate choreography, Morgan admits that some of the dancers preferred tending to the movement's more technical aspects over character development. This seems understandable, given that they are dancers before actors. Yet theater and dance share a common link of movement and its subtleties.

Being connected to a story affects Morgan's choreography. "It's still classical vocabulary, but it's more gestural ... it's dance, but it's pantomime, too." Although she loves the more straightforward, neoclassical "pure dance" parts, some of her favorite sections are the "goofiest" ones. She believes audiences respond well to things that "have heart about them."

Because the dancers had familiarized themselves with the characters they were to portray, Morgan often discussed characterizations and motivations instead of telling the dancers exactly what steps to do. Most enjoyed the freedom of interpreting their own characters through movement, based on material from the play. Since this is the second production of Morgan's version, she has enjoyed seeing how dancers in different casts can take the same information and move it in new directions.

"They are extremely entertaining and I was just so amazed at what came out."

Sounds like promising news for both theater and ballet audiences.