La Bayadere

I am slowly filling in the gaps in the repertoire of classical ballets that I have seen.  Most recent was La Bayadere, courtesy of the wonderful Munich StaatsBallet, which streams their performances live online.

La Bayadere is the tragedy of Nikiya, a devadasi who is in love with Solor.  

Nikiya

We do not forgive Solor, even though he has lovely gran jetes.

 Solor is an idiotic twit, even by the standards of ballet princes.  He is perhaps not quite as bad as Albrecht in Giselle, but only by virtue of being apparently genuinely confused, about everything.  He has Nikiya, who has already won our hearts completely in the first scene with her dancing: such grace, spirit, and joy!  But upon being told he is to marry the princess Ghamzatti,    

Solor falls for the sparkly purple pants and agrees.  Trouble is brewing, of course: not even a ballet princess with a sparkly purple costume has things completely her own way.  Nikiya comes to see Ghamzatti,

who proudly refuses to give up Solor.  Nikiya draws a dagger, but what could have been a magnificently choreographed fight is cut short by the elderly servant.  I was disappointed; a well-done knife fight on pointe shoes would have been amazing.  However, one of the priests is also in love with Nikiya, and sees a chance to have her by ratting on Solor and Nikiya to Ghamzatti's father, the rajah.  This doesn't turn out well, as the infuriated rajah decrees that Nikiya, and not Solor, shall die.   

Time for the wedding!  Nikiya dances for the wedding couple, despite an obviously broken heart.  A snake hidden in her basket of flowers, courtesy of the rajah, bites her and this dance becomes her death dance as well. 

Solor is a little disturbed and takes a break from wedding preparations to smoke enough opium to have a drug-induced visit to the land of shades

Wait, a classical tutu?  Why?

where he dances with the ghost of Nikiya, who forgives him.  No, stop.  Stop right there, Nikiya.  You do NOT forgive the jerk who abandoned you for a rich princess, especially since he's not even sorry enough to call off that wedding!  This is where you force him to dance to death, or at least spurn him so he will die of a broken heart when he wakes up from his opium trance! 

This makes me very angry, both the trope of letting the jerk prince off without so much as a slap, and the La Bayadere instance of the trope.  Also confused, because this pas de deux was as emotionless and flat as 3-day-old ginger ale.  Solor and Nikiya don't interact or display any emotion at all, even while dancing together.  The large ensemble sits on stage and is not given anything to do besides being scenery.  I don't get it.  I don't care if you are following the choreography of the supposedly famous Petipa; he obviously didn't know how to do this kind of scene, and you should change it.  If we are going to have a land of shades scene with the grievously wronged prima, we should have recriminations and sorrow and a choreographer who can use large groups for something besides extra scenery!  

Back to the awake world for the wedding celebration!  Ghamzatti appears in a purple tutu and discovers the tutu is much less alluring than her purple sparkly pants.  Her dancing becomes more and more desperate as she tries to convince her new spouse that he should be happy because he now has her!  I feel for Ghamzatti.  She wouldn't have had much choice in her marriage, she wouldn't have been able to call it off, she has to make this work because she can't get a divorce, and she can't kill Solor because of the lovely little custom called suttee.  Patriarchy sucks.

Anyway, Solor alternates between gloomy depression and thinking his new princess is just as nice as the old one, and we have some good ensemble work

 and then the god(s? only one shows up to dance)

Dude, that is totally the wrong hasta (hand position) for a god.  I don't think that's even one of the classical hastas.  You should be doing mushti or sikhara, or pataka for swords of righteous wrath.

show up because they are angry at the wrong done to Nikiya and destroy everyone.  Except we get a disconnected final scene where the three principals...

go to heaven?  attain nirvana?  merge with the tao?  Your guesses, gentle reader?  Any "happy" ending would be shallow and silly after the total lack of resolution between Nikiya and Solor, so I think the ballet should have stopped with the destruction.  

General rant: costumes and hand gestures.  La Bayadere is the ignorant Victorian idea of India, so I would have accepted Western ballet costume and conventions throughout.  However, this production tried to mix things...and came up with vaguely Arabian-nights costumes next to classical tutus, which was weird, and totally wacky hand gestures.  This is the internet age.  How hard would it be to google some actual Indian dance attire and modify it for pointe shoes?  How hard would it have to been to watch some actual classical Indian dance  and copy the actual hastas?  (Conflict of interest disclosure: the video link is of my guru, who is the best dancer in the world!) 

As someone who has worn classical dance costume, I can attest that that fan opens out a full half-circle or more of fabric, so you could do arabesques in it with very little, if any, modification.  And the blouse is close-fitting, so that could be used almost as-is as well.  The belt and jewelry might have to be modified, but while the Arabian nights look is pretty, you can get much closer to the real thing and still dance classical ballet in it.  And the ignorant guessing about hand gestures just makes me roll my eyes that the choreographer was too lazy to do some research.

In the end, though, I will forgive everything about this production for Nikiya (Ekaterina Petina).  I do not have enough superlatives to describe how good her dancing was.  Not just the technique, everyone at the Munich StaatsBallet has perfect technique, but the unbounded grace and the clear storytelling through her dance.  She was perfect.