National Theater, Munich
February 25, 2024
Is it politically correct to put a ballet like Marius Petipa’s La Bayadère (1877) on stage today, with its westernised and romanticised version of a snippet of Indian culture that’s a far cry from reality? Absolutely yes, if you can accept the fact that it was created in a bygone era ruled by values differing from ours of today, and if you can see it as the fairytale it is.
This season, the Bayerisches Staatsballett restaged La Bayadère in its own version, which they commissioned from Patrice Bart in 1998. It is based on Petipa, but Bart reduced the ballet to two from four acts, and rechoreographed the action following The Kingdom of the Shades, because at that time, this part of the ballet was lost. He also changed the ending. In Petipa’s version, after their death, Nikiya and Solor meet in Paradise. Bart lets Nikiya, Solor and Gamzatti stand with their backs to the audience, united in the eternal light. An idea inspired by Japanese designer, Tomio Mohri, who created the sets.
Photo Nicholas MacKay
On February 25th, the ballet, a drama about love, unrequited love and deceit, was carried by two strong women embodying very different personalities. Ksenia Shevtsova, who joined the Staatsballett this season, made her company debut as Nikiya, and Elvina Ibraimova, who danced Gamzatti. They fiercely fought for Solor, Jinhao Zhang, a good dancer, but displaying so little emotion, that it felt as if he was settling for the marriage with Gamzatti without much regret.
Shevtsova is very musical. In her dance, she makes every note of the music visible. She also has an immense stage presence. Walking alone with a jug of water on her shoulder, waiting for Solor in the first act, she filled the entire stage. On her first entrance, her face veiled, she was all arched, pointed feet, indicating a steely core beneath the submissiveness she displays in her function as temple dancer. Her emotions are strong and uncorrupted. Vehemently, she rejects the High Brahmin, and it breaks her heart when she sees Solor kissing Gamzatti’s hand. In despair she whirls around the stage.
Photo Katja Lotter
Ibraimova is her counterpart. She knows her worth as the Rajah’s daughter, and displays none of Nikiya’s chasteness. In her first solo, she presents herself as a sensual and seductive woman, her love for Solor not based on reciprocality, but on her being entitled to have him. It shows in her independent way of dancing with him too, and how she seems to take his presence for granted.
The power play between these two expressive and very distinct characters amply made up for the fact that the corps de ballet, the temple dancers and Solor’s friends, looked a little hurried, as if the music was played too fast, or perhaps they had not had enough rehearsal time. The Kingdom of the Shades was mesmerizing though. A flurry of intangible dreams, the three Shades stood out. Wonderfully danced by Margarita Grechanaia, Biaca Teixeira and Carolina Bastos, their clear lines lent them the appearance of weightlessness.
The Golden Idol, Ariel Merkuri, excelled with high jumps. The solo was not in Petipa’s original version but created and first danced by Nikolay Zubkovsky for a Kirov Ballet restaging in 1948. It has since remained in the ballet as part of Gamzatti’s and Solor’s wedding celebration, perhaps because it offers a dancer the chance to display his exceptional virtuosity.
Photo Katja Lotter
The drummer, Konstantin Ivkin, and his companions were a feast of explosive movement. The Bayerisches Staatsorchestra played Ludwig Minkus’ score live, conducted by Kevin Rhodes with great empathy.
La Bayadère is a fairytale, which the Bayerisches Staatsballett turn into big drama. But the company does not ignore the problems the ballet has. In the programme, several articles discuss how colonialism impacted on the presentation of foreign cultures on stage, and how that affected our view of them. In India, there were no bayadères like those in the ballet. It is a western invention. The women working in the temples were called ‘devadasis’ (which translates to servants of God) and served an array of functions. Showing La Bayadère and creating an awareness around its problems is surely a much better way of dealing with them, rather than shoving the ballet into oblivion.
To show what inspired artists at the end of the 19th-century, the Staatsballett also created a web-comic, Sakuntala’s Ring (click here), based on the Indian verse drama Sakuntala by the poet Kalidasa that served as an on inspiration for La Bayadère. Seven illustrators were commissioned to create a scene each, plus Renu Hossain to do the music, a mix of that from the ballet in a recording by the Bayerisches Staatsorchestra from 2023, and her own sound design. Ironically, all the team are non-Indian artists excepts for Renu, born in London but of Bengali heritage.