As the ballet begins its April 17-19 run at Cal Performances, UC Berkeley scholar Linda Rugg unpacks the surreal Scandinavian rituals and rural history featured in the production.
As the days stretch toward the summer solstice — the longest day of the year — Cal Performances is presenting the Joffrey Ballet’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, an original production by acclaimed Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman that dives headlong into the surreal, sun-drenched rituals of the Scandinavian north.
The ballet, which opens today and runs through Sunday, April 19, draws on Nordic folklore rather than Shakespeare’s Elizabethan comedy. It replaces the familiar fairies and Athenian lovers of the 16th-century play with a surreal, earthy celebration of the summer solstice, featuring a stage covered in real hay and a focus on authentic Swedish Midsummer traditions.
To help us navigate the haystacks, maypoles and midnight magic, we spoke with Linda Rugg, a UC Berkeley professor emerita of Scandinavian studies and former Associate Vice Chancellor for Research. After 25 years of exploring the intersection of Nordic literature, film and folklore, Rugg unpacks why the longest day of the year remains a deep, ancient necessity and how the ballet captures the thin veil between the human and the supernatural.