I have concluded arrangements with England’s Old Vic to present on the North American continent their superlative new production of Shakespeare’s _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, staged by Michael Benthall, with really magnificent settings and costumes by James Bailey. The cast will include Robert Helpmann, as Oberon, and Moira Shearer, as Titania, with outstanding and distinguished British actors in the other roles; and, utilizing the full Mendelssohn score, the production will have a ballet of forty, choreographed by Robert Helpmann. The production will be seen at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in mid-September, 1954, for a season, to be followed by a short tour of the leading cities of the United States and Canada. This will, I feel, be one of the most significant artistic productions to be revealed across the continent since the days of Max Reinhardt’s _The Miracle_. It gives me great personal satisfaction to be able to offer this first of the new productions of London’s famous Old Vic. The other choice tid-bit to which I feel American dance lovers will look forward with keen anticipation is the coast-to-coast tour of London’s Festival Ballet with Toumanova as guest star. The Festival Ballet was founded by Anton Dolin for the British Festival, under the immediate patronage of H.H. Princess Marie Louise. Dr. Julian Braunsweg is its managing director. It has grown steadily in stature and is today one of Europe’s best known ballet companies. Under the artistic direction of Anton Dolin it has appeared with marked success for several seasons at the Royal Festival Hall, London; has toured Britain, all western Europe; and, in the spring of 1953, gave a highly successful two weeks’ season in Montreal and Toronto, where it received as high critical approval as ever accorded any ballet company in Canada. There is a company of eighty, and a repertoire of evenly balanced classics and modern creations, including, among others, the following: a full-length _Nutcracker_, _Giselle_, _Petrouchka_, _Swan Lake_, (_Act I_), _Le Beau Danube_, _Schéhérazade_, _Symphonic Impressions_, _Pas de Quatre_, _Bolero_, _Black Swan_, _Vision of Marguerite_, _Symphony for Fun_, _Pantomime Harlequinade_, _Don Quixote_, _Les Sylphides_, _Le Spectre de la Rose_, _Prince Igor_, _Concerto Grosso_. This international exchange of ballet companies is one of the bulwarks of mutual understanding and sympathy. It is a source of deep gratification to me that I have been instrumental in bringing the companies of the Sadler’s Wells organization, the Ballet of the Paris Opera, and others to North America, as it is that I have been able to be of service in arranging for the two visits of the New York City Ballet to London. It is through the medium of such exchanges, presenting no language barriers, but offering beauty as a common bond, that we are able to bridge those hideous chasms so often caused by misunderstood and, too often, unwise and thoughtlessly chosen words.