You’ve seen them in cities from London to Las Vegas. Now some of those amazing artists from Cirque du Soleil and other world-class performers will appear on an outside stage for the first time at Lake Tahoe to present A Midsummer Night-MARE. If you’ve ever dreamed about running away to the circus, this is your chance. Grab your hat and your wildest imagination and head for Sand Harbor on Aug. 24 and 25. A Midsummer Night-MARE will be a dynamic dream performance unlike anything ever seen on the stages of Lake Tahoe.

Lake Tahoe’s foray into the surreal was conceived by internationally acclaimed artistic director Christopher Childers, who incidentally lives in Reno…aren’t we lucky!

Childers grew up in the San Francisco area and has performed since the age of three as a dancer in television, film and on the world stage. He developed his distinctive dance style from working with top directors and choreographers including: Twlyla Tharp, Jerrome Robbins, Madonna, Prince, Moses Pendleton and others. He has performed at the Lido de Paris and spent seven years with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas, first as a principal character, the Red Bird, in Mystere then as dance and movement coach for the Las Vegas productions of O and Mystere.

“In Cirque du Soleil you leave the world for a while,” he said in a recent interview. “You go somewhere in your mind. Cirque allows creative freedom and a lot of room for improvement and risk taking. It’s a circus at heart,” he said.

In A Midsummer Night-MARE, audiences will be transported through a dream sequence where a young girl falls asleep and her dream becomes a nightmare, ethereal and magical, sometimes dark, but not too scary. Extraordinary characters from her imagination guide her journey while performing astonishing dance sequences, acrobatic and aerial acts.

The girl, her mother, a friend and her alter egos will be performed by seven young dancers and the artistic director from InnerRhythms Dance Theatre, a regional dance company in the Truckee/North Lake Tahoe area. Lead dancers from the company include Leigh Collins, a 16-year-old junior at Truckee High School who just returned from a summer intensive with the Joffrey Ballet in New York, and 15-year-old Cheyenne Rosenfeld, a sophomore at North Tahoe High School who just completed a summer program with the Boston Ballet. Other young performers are Jane Redmond, 14; Julia Severance, 14; Michaela Clauss, 14; Micaela Plumb, 14; and Jamie Berger, 12.

The collaborative effort between world-class professionals and up-and-coming young dancers is a first of its kind project by producer Sheri Woodsgreen, a board member of the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, InnerRhythms Artistic Director Elizabeth Archer and Childers, who has assembled an impressive array of professional talent from around the world.

“I am really excited to see my vision come to life,” Childers said. “The talent for this show is so blow-away and so amazing and they are all my friends!”

The line-up of Childers’ friends includes Elena Lev, star of the 2005 Las Vegas production Alegria and a master of hoops and contortion. See her beauty and grace at http://www.hoopsact.com">www.hoopsact.com; Rebecca Prince, a former lead character and dancer in the Cirque du Soleil production of Mystere at the Treasure Island Hotel in Las Vegas; Katia Sereno, one the nation’s most renowned aerialists and a former member of the original Las Vegas cast of the Cirque du Soleil production of O. More Cirque du Soleil veterans are Sebastien "Seb" Stella, an acrobat and stuntman who has performed around the world as an original cast member of the musical hit Notre Dame de Paris and with O in Las Vegas, and Solstrom for BRAVO; Trevor Nassler, a former Canadian Champion on the trampoline, has performed more than 2500 shows with Cirque du Soleil, including Mystere in Las Vegas and the touring show Saltimbanco. The astonishing dancers of Stiltworld, http://www.stiltworld.com">www.stiltworld.com, led by Trey Knight were featured artists for Cirque du Soleil’s KA world premiere at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. They have also appeared on America’s Got Talent, in a video with Christina Aguilera and at the Burning Man festival.

Other performers include Tanya Garafolo, a world-class belly dancer from Las Vegas; Broadway and film dancer Natalie Willes, whose credits include Broadway’s Saturday Night Fever, Movin’ Out, Like Jazz., and Chicago the Movie; singer Tiffanie Story, the co-host of the Reno-Tahoe Adventures television show and a former Miss Nevada 2001; and Sideswipe, currently appearing on NBC’s America’s Got Talent. Sideswipe's high energy act combines martial arts with acrobatics, flipping six to eight feet in the air on every move. The four handsome, buff young guys perform shirtless…what could be better! For a preview of the eye-candy, check out the video below.

“I am honored to work with all these divas of the entertainment biz and to bring this new experience to Tahoe, my favorite place on the planet, next to Disneyland!” said Childers. “One thing I’ve realized about myself and my work is that it truly hangs in between the delicate balance of order and chaos,” he said.

In addition to creating and directing the production, Childers will also perform as a dancer.