A fairy’s work isn’t easy.

Despite its magical subject matter, George Balanchine’s 1962 story ballet “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is one of the most fast-paced and vigorous works by the American choreographer. The tale of fairies and mismatched lovers jeté-ing through the enchanted forest is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy performed to the music of Felix Mendelssohn.

After a 34-year absence from the repertoire, the ballet was one of the most anticipated works of San Francisco Ballet’s 2020 season. But, after justone performance on March 6,the coronavirus pandemic shut down the season.

Of the performance, Chronicle dance critic Rachel Howard said: “I have rarely witnessed a finer — or more joyous — ensemble triumph.” Nowthose who didn’t get to catch “Midsummer” last year can view the production as part of the company’s first-everall-digital season。(旧金山芭蕾舞团报告,超过000 individuals purchased access to the ballet the first weekend it was available for viewing.)

“It seems fitting that we open the 2021 season with what closed the 2020 season after only one performance,” said San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson, who has announcedplans to retire in 2022before the start of the new season.

The Ballet got permission to record “Midsummer” at the Opera House on March 14, just two days before San Francisco announced its first shelter-in-place order. That performance was available to stream for those who had purchased tickets for the 2020 performance, but now the company is “thrilled that this year, this beautiful, recently captured production is available to everyone across the globe,” Tomasson said.

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Tomasson understands the artistry of this particular work intimately. From 1975 to 1983 he performed the role of Oberon, king of the fairies, as a principal dancer at New York City Ballet under the directorship of Balanchine. Although he initially learned the role from fellow principal dancer Edward Villella, Tomasson’s proximity to the ballet’s creator offered him a chance to get input directly from the choreographer.

“So many people say that Balanchine is cold, and yet he tells a wonderful, warm story here,” Tomasson told The Chronicle last year. “He had a great sense of telling a story through movement even though he didn’t do many ballets like that.”

As Tomasson does now in his role at San Francisco Ballet, Balanchine attended rehearsals and frequently offered critiques to dancers about their work, down to the most specific aspects of a movement’s phrasing. While San Francisco Ballet rehearsed the work in 2020, Tomasson acted as a conduit to Balanchine for the next generation of fairy kings.

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“He has such a wealth of knowledge about the smallest details of the role,” said Joseph Walsh, who plays Oberon in the filmed performance. It isamong the hardest roles he’s ever learned due to its demands of artistic precision and athletic endurance.

In a mirroring of Tomasson’s experience with Balanchine, Walsh said that Tomasson was able to offer specifics about how he might technically approach the role based on his history with the choreographer. That included things like how to most easily execute a turn, how Oberon is directed to shake a flower or how to bring his arms to fifth position just so. Sometimes Tomasson even quoted Balanchine’s own words in a faint, high-pitched voice that recalls how the late choreographer spoke.

“They’re paying too much money not to give them the best thing we can give them,” Walsh joked, impersonating Tomasson quoting Balanchine.

Reflecting on his experiences dancing Oberon, Tomasson assessed that “stamina-wise it’s hard, and technically hard.” While the choreography is full of fairy-appropriate “light and flight,” Oberon must also convey a certain sense of nobility and weightiness in his position as the king of the forest. These two contradictory elements must coexist in the dancers’ performance, Tomasson said.

For all its challenges, Tomasson called Oberon a “wonderful role,” that was among the parts most identified with him during his dancing career. In a 1982 New York Times review of the ballet, Jack Anderson called Tomasson’s performance “regal and otherworldly.” (Anderson also noted that he seemed “inordinately pleased with himself,” a description that Tomasson is still amused by.)

Bringing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” back to the company was on Tomasson’s wish list for years.

“There was always one reason or another that somehow prevented us from presenting it,” Tomasson said. “It was important that we find the right production of the ballet, and this production courtesy of Pacific Northwest Ballet, with costumes designed by Martin Pakledinaz, was the perfect fit for us this time around.”

Both Walsh and Tomasson cite understanding the musicality of Balanchine’s movement as the key to performing Oberon. The way Balanchine phrased the dancer’s motions to the score has an eventual logic, Tomasson noted, which creates a certain flow in the relationship between movement and music. Eventually, dancers learn to get in sync with that relationship.

Part of mastering that flow isn’t just considering the beat of a movement, but also learning what accent of a beat a dancer moves on, said Walsh. That’s how precise the choreography is.

In spite of his close relationship to the role, Tomasson said he’s careful not to put dancers in a position where they feel they have to perform Oberon the same way he did under Balanchine.

“I have to look at them — how they move, how they’re built, their speed or lack of speed — and what I have to enhance for them,” Tomasson said. “I don’t want to say ‘I did it this way,’ or ‘I did it that way.’ I say, ‘That’s the choreography, that’s what Balanchine said to me at this point.’ ”

San Francisco Ballet’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”:Available to stream through Feb. 10. $29 for single stream viewing; $289 season tickets, which include three story ballets and four mixed bills.www.sfballet.org