In the Mi(d)st
In the Mi(d)st is a one-act ballet created by Miriam Mahdaviani for New York City Ballet, set to a composite score drawn from Oliver Knussen's The Way to Castle Yonder and excerpts from his Music for a Puppet Court, combined with Aaron Jay Kernis' Overture in Feet and Meters. It entered the repertory as part of NYCB's Diamond Project V, the company's periodic initiative for newly commissioned choreography, and was first given on June 21, 2002, at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center.
What is danced
The source article does not describe the choreography, cast, or any specific steps, holds, or set pieces performed in the work — there is no synopsis, no numbers list, and the cast section is blank. What can be established is the musical scaffolding the choreography was built on: a stitched-together score assembling two Knussen orchestral works (one of them, The Way to Castle Yonder, originally written for a Maurice Sendak-related theatrical project) with a separate concert overture by Aaron Jay Kernis. A choreographer working from three distinct musical sources of differing character (a fantastical narrative score, court-music excerpts, and a contemporary concert overture) would typically be assembling a suite-like structure rather than a single continuous narrative, but the article gives no basis for describing the actual movement vocabulary used.
Context
The premiere sits within NYCB's Diamond Project, the series begun in 1992 (continuing under Peter Martins) to commission a wave of new ballets at once, several to newly commissioned or curated contemporary scores; Diamond Project V, in 2002, was one of the later installments of that initiative. Working from Knussen's concert and theatrical scores placed the piece among a run of NYCB commissions that paired choreography with living composers rather than the nineteenth-century or Stravinsky-era scores more central to the company's core repertory.
How to watch it
Because the piece draws on three separately composed musical sources rather than one through-written score, attend to how the choreography marks transitions between them — whether scene divisions, cast groupings, or tempo shifts align with the changes from Knussen's theatrical writing to his court-music excerpts to Kernis's overture. No further staging convention can be confirmed from available material, so viewers should treat any programme note on structure as the primary guide.
Credits
- composer: Oliver Knussen