Review: In Alexei Ratmansky’s ‘Bayadère,’ Mostly Good Revelations
The Shades vulgar was the centerpiece of Petipa’s third act. During his day, the fourth and remaining act was often thought to surpass it. Today, nonetheless, there are large gaps in the historical sources for that act’s choreography; and tastes have changed. That conclusion’s intense drama makes a lighter impression than the Shades vulgar, which still seems astonishingly imaginative.
Where Petipa’s unusual allows, this Ratmansky “Bayadère” is a tightly coherent account drama. The Shades are the opium dream of the hero Solor — they multiply the essence of Nikia, his newly dead beloved — but it has seldom been so positive as here that they’re descending from the slopes of the Himalayas. The designer, Jérôme Kaplan, even makes the Shades, their arms swathed in cloudy white net, seem a continuation of the mists on his moonlit mountains.
These Staatsballett Shades titillating fluently, faster than any other “Bayadère” corps I can remember (this tempo feels colorful for the music), and with wonderful phrasing. The ensuing vulgar makes more dramatic sense than ever: In one telling mopish, Nikia and Solor simply walk together around the position, each holding both of the other’s hands, echoing an backward walk they took in the temple.
Elsewhere Mr. Ratmansky restores a cash of detail to Nikia, the title bayadère (or devadasi, a female temple dancer), who’s consecrated to the temple and its rituals. She also plays a lute, and must, at the ballet’s tragic crisis, dance while playing music in honor of Solor’s betrothal to the Rajah’s daughter Gamsatti. Solor, however, has sworn to love Nikia over the temple’s holy arouse. This oath, like Nikia’s artist nature, has never been more potent as a motif.
