According to DVD commentary, when Summer Glau finished her four-page monologue, she received a standing ovation from the crew and the extras remaining on set from the theater scene. This eventually led to comedian Jeff Laub suggesting that Joss Whedon have her read for the role of River Tam on his new series, Firefly (2002).
While Joss Whedon was filming the dressing room scene with Cordelia and Angel, he explains that he wanted to shoot it in one continuous camera shot to "get the space, to keep the camera moving, to get the magical feel for the whole thing." However, in rehearsal at the moment that Cordelia stands in front of the mirror, David Boreanaz was standing behind her, reflected. Whedon remembers, "I said, 'That's great, and then we'll go to David's reflections and then we'll go to her here,' and then everybody got very quiet and I believe it was Ross Berryman the director of photography who said, 'You do remember that he's a vampire, yes?'"
Joss Whedon says on the DVD extras that he conceived this episode because he discovered that Amy Acker (who played Fred) had taken fifteen years of ballet classes, and he wanted to work her dancing into an episode somehow. He built the plot forward from a fantasy sequence in which Wesley imagines that Fred, instead of the enchanted ballerina, is dancing the lead female role (beautifully) and he joins her to dance the lead male role (terribly). The sequence ended up being cut, but it is viewable on the DVD.
While investigating, Angel says that he has been possessed by the spirit of lovers before and it never goes well. This is reference to I Only Have Eyes for You (1998) in which Buffy and Angel are possessed by the spirits of the ill-fated lovers James Stanley and Grace Newman at Sunnydale High School.
Joss Whedon says on the DVD commentary that this was his very favorite directorial effort (up to that point, at least, having written but not yet directed the episode Once More, with Feeling (2001)); that he used to shoot campus dance recitals when he was in college, and that he was "a wanna-be dancer more than I'm a wanna-be almost anything."