Bolt, a work choreographed by company director Alexei Ratmansky to a score by Shostakovich, will also have its world premiere.

The world premiere of Neumeier's ballet was performed by the Hamburg Ballett in 1977. Neumeier, an American who studied ballet in Copenhagen and London and was a soloist in John Cranko's Stuttgart Ballet, has been director and chief choreographer of that company since 1973. Before that, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he caused a sensation as the director of the Ballett Frankfurt by re-interpreting classic ballets such as The Nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet, and Daphnis and Chloe.

Midsummer Night's Dream is Neumeier's first ballet with the Bolshoi, although he has previously worked with the St. Petersburg-based Mariinsky Theatre. The production features some of the company's stars, including Svetlana Zakharova, Svetlana Lunkina, Anna Antonicheva, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, Dmitri Belogolovtsev, and Yuri Klevtsov.