“Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a full evening ballet in two acts by Alexander Ekman, with a pre-recorded score by Mikael Karlsson.
It premiered April 2019 with the Royal Swedish Ballet.
It was brought back for a second run at the Royal Swedish Opera in 2022.
With the complicity of the excellent Royal Swedish Ballet, Alexander Ekman makes dreams dance in a new surprising, lyrical and cosmic choreographical piece.
After the instant success of Midsummer Night’s Dream, exploring the density of traditional mysticism and the maze of imagination, choreographer Alexander Ekman and the Royal Swedish Ballet once again brings us on a dancing journey through the looking glass, beyond our own reality.
Known for the spectacular quality of his pieces and the oneiric imagery he tends to deploy, Ekman seamlessly takes us from one unlikely situation from the next, thanks to the incredible technical mastery and versatility of the Royal Swedish Ballet dancers. ‘I like creating worlds that have never been seen before’, Ekman wrote while creating Play with the Paris Opera Ballet: without ever sacrificing lyrical beauty and deep contemplation to pointless incongruity, Eskapist proves once again that the theatrical stage truly is a magic place, where the world as we know it shifts shapes only to dissolve into the most poetic fantasies one could envision.
Once more, Ekman has sought support from his long-term acolyte, Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson, whose entrancing music follows the wide range of styles mobilized by Ekman: sometimes downright comic and uplifting, and sometimes reflexive, deep, and ultimately cosmic.
From the Bel Air Classiques website.
CHOREOGRAPHY, SET DESIGN, LIGHTING DESIGN, DIRECTION: Alexander Ekman
MUSIC / AUDITORIUM MULTICHANNEL MUSIC MIX: Mikael Karlsson
COSTUME DESIGN: Henrik Vibskov
VIDEO: Alexander Ekman
SOUND DESIGN: Lars-Göran Ehn
DRAMATURGY: Carina Nildalen
WORLD PREMIERE CAST
Royal Swedish Ballet
Fantastically entertaining and meticulously presented. The backstage crew deserve an applause that is as long as that of the dancers for this technically magnificent, completely seamless, performance.
Aftonbladet
Eskapist is an entertaining, magnificent and beautiful defense of stepping out of the box and engage in independent thinking, play, flights of the imagination and dreaming.
Dagens Nyheter
A generous show inside the fabulous world of Ekman.
Svenska Dagbladet
An entertaining, thought-provoking and magnificent evening at the Opera.
Expressen
It’s magical … a dizzying escape from reality.
Sveriges Radio, Kulturnytt
Around half way there comes a moment of lyrical beauty as billowing white drapes flood the stage and in the final moment again on a stripped-down stage, the dances whirl in black and white striped skirts creating patterns of pinwheels. At this moment, they build their own triple rhythm within Karlsson’s atmospheric sound score and the moment is thrilling in its unity.Escapist is a packed 90 minutes; a journey into a magic realm but one that is very human and inviting. It is absolutely Ekman, but more mature and cohesive but thankfully never losing its wide-eyed sense of fun.
Seeing Dance
The music to ESCAPIST has yet to be mixed for an album release by me (Mika), but it’s coming.
