(Critic's Notebook): NEW YORK — The magic works fast. From the moment the first child-fairy flitters across the stage, pausing front and center to ripple her arms like tiny, trembling wings, the regenerative power of George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” starts to take hold. Decent story ballets are hard to come by, but this New York City Ballet production, set to music by Felix Mendelssohn, has everything: humor, fantasy and spectacular dancing. Take anyone you know, of any age.
Although City Ballet has faced scandals and backstage drama over the last year, the level of dancing remains high. It can’t be easy. On Tuesday and Thursday — the spring season wraps up with “Midsummer” on Sunday at the David H. Koch Theater — there were two new interpreters of Puck, each charming for different reasons. Taylor Stanley, on Tuesday, braided the quick wit of the character with what he brings to all of his roles: natural, razor-sharp efficiency of movement and a mysterious inner life. He didn’t just dance the role, he lived it.
Roman Mejia, a rising member of the corps de ballet, is more ebullient: He has a smile that spreads to his eyes, and while his Puck had little of the elegant etherealness of Stanley’s, his glee was contagious. There were moments when he pushed too hard and was too hammy, but his boyish zeal (or should that be puppyish?) had real gusto.
In “Midsummer,” the first act tells Shakespeare’s story, in which Titania and Oberon fight over a Page, while the star-crossed lovers — Helena, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius — find themselves gravely and humorously mismatched. On both nights, all the lovers were effective — especially Unity Phelan as a frantic, ravaged Helena and Aaron Sanz’s deadpan Lysander.
Ashley Laracey, lovely as Hermia, conveyed grief and longing through her regal arms and hands. She’s best in dreamy roles in ballets like “Emeralds” and “Scotch Symphony,” in which she made her debut last Friday. What she lacks in power and stamina, she makes up for in her delicacy. Nothing is rushed.
But Sara Mearns, as Titania in “Midsummer,” was a rush — of eloquent amplitude and daring. The way she uses her weight to tip herself off-balance and right herself again gives her dancing a lush sense of tension and release. Her vivid acting is on another level, too. Titania’s duet with Bottom, a weaver transformed into a donkey by the mischievous Puck, was elevated by her glamorous daffiness.
In his debut as Bottom, Preston Chamblee’s alert timing was undercut by his tendency toward exaggeration, like when he smacked — much too hard — an imaginary bug on his leg. In “Midsummer,” the humor is built in; it doesn’t need anything extra.
As Oberon on Thursday, Anthony Huxley transmitted playful refinement: With his impeccable technique and noble bearing, he sailed across the stage like a beam of golden light, springing into jumps and beats as if he were skipping down a sidewalk. That night, Emily Kikta’s Hippolyta was astonishing for her sleek power, a contrast to Tuesday and the inconsistent, stilted dancing of Megan LeCrone.
A silken pas de deux dominates Act 2 of “Midsummer,” and on Tuesday it was a reminder that Megan Fairchild, opposite Tyler Angle, is one of the most alluring dancers in the company. Her technique has always been strong; but since she has returned from two challenging acts for any ballerina — dancing on Broadway, then having a baby — her dancing has reached a deeper place.
When Fairchild is onstage, you can tell she doesn’t want or need to be anywhere else. Is that really true of all dancers? To watch her return to the formidable ballerina role in “Theme and Variations,” the final movement of “Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3,” was to witness struggle and triumph as she wavered early on and fought back with such spirit and sweep that the performance became something more than just a performance. It was a real-life reminder: Never give up.
Another dancer who holds nothing back is the joyful, continually impressive Indiana Woodward, who flew across the stage in admirable abandon as the dancer in apricot in Jerome Robbins’ “Dances at a Gathering,” in which Huxley, in brown, was all quiet elegance. (Isn’t it time that Woodward is promoted to principal? Like Stanley, what can’t she do?)
And, as always at City Ballet, there are those who dance in the back row like it’s the front. Mira Nadon is clearly going to go places. So how about letting her go somewhere now? I also have my eye on Jonathan Fahoury. And Miriam Miller, already in possession of beauty and line, is gaining strength. On Saturday, she reprises her part as Titania, a role she’s danced since 2015. But she needs more challenges. Miller does something that many don’t: She looks at the people she’s performing with, and that goes a long way: That is dancing.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.