On a cold winter’s night in Ottawa, we witnessed a hot performance of this classic Shakespearean story by a dance troupe that, when I purchased the National Arts Centre tickets last year, I thought was the Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. It’s a good thing I was mistaken, as that all-male company would not have been able to pull off the funny and flirty masterpiece by Jean-Christophe Maillot, Choreographer-Director of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo. Le Songe is a erotic fairy-tale comedy performed by a large company of strong and graceful dancers. The fairy king, Oberon, in a colourful costume that made his buttocks look bare, was fiery and imperious; his queen, Titania, lithe and beautiful in a white, almost transparent body-suit, was sensuous yet haughty. Their steamy, stormy relationship sparked more than one captivating and sensuous pas de deux. Oberon’s faithful, mischievous sprite Puck stole the show careening around the stage on a Segway, camouflaged as a flower with magic juice, placing enchantments on all the wrong people, with disastrous but hilarious results. Oberon demands that Puck remedy his errors, and in the end the hapless human he involved, as well as the sprite king and queen, are all correctly reunited.