ON TOUR: LA BAYADÈRE

The Bayerisches Staatsballett staged the German premiere of La Bayadère in 1998 in a production by French choreographer Patrice Bart and Japanese set and costume designer Tomio Mohri. Part of the production are the famous 'Shadow Act', the opulent Defilee in the Engagement Feast or the numerous pantomime scenes after the original version by Marius Petipa. The 19th century fascination with non-European narratives and representations is unmistakably linked to this ballet classic. In the foreground of the Munich version is the fairy-tale character of the plot.

Act I

Scene One: In front of the temple
The Great Brahmin, his priests and the temple dancers, called Bayadères, assemble for the festivities of the Holy Fire. The last to appear is Nikiya, the noblest and holiest of the Bayadères. The Great Brahmin vows Love to her, but she refuses him. Solor, a rich and noble warrior of royal caste, is on his way to a hunt. While he sends on his friends he secretly awaits Nikiya. Solor and Nikiya confess their love. The Bayadère demands of him his vow of fidelity. The Great Brahmin who has witnessed the meeting of the lovers desperately swears revenge.

Scene Two: In the palace of the Rajah
The Rajah announces to his daughter Gamzatti that her wedding with Solor, to whom she has been betrothed since childhood, will soon take place. She is enchanted by Solor, but does not understand why he behave in such a restrained way towards her. After a few dancers presented some entertainment the Great Brahmin appears to confess a secret to the Rajah. He tells him of the forbidden love between Nikiya and Solor, hoping that the Rajah might dispose of Solor. Instead, to the dismay of the Great Brahmin, the Rajah in blind fury orders Nikiya`s death. Gamzatti has overheard the conversation and sends her servant Aiya to call the Bayadère. She asks Nikiya to abandon Solor, offers her jewels as a reward. Nikiya refuses and in her despair attacks Gamzatti with a dagger. Aiya stops her, she can escape, Gamzatti swears her death.

Scene Three: In the garden of the palace
The engagement festivities of Solor and Ganzatti open as a grand procession. The Great Brahmin brings Nikiya as a temple dancer in honour of the ceremony. Nikiya is given a basket with flowers by Aiya, which she takes to be a secret sign of love by Solor. However, it is by the rajah and his daughter who had a snake hidden in it. When Nikiya continues to dance, embracing the small basket, the viper attacks her with a deadly bite. The Great Brahmin offers Nikiya an antidote if only she would accept his love. She refuses it and dies, urging Solor never to forget his vow of love.

Act II

Scene Four: The Kingdom of Shades
Solar, haunted by reminiscences of Nikiya, seeks oblivion in opium. He finds himself in the Kingdom of Shades, united with Nikiya who introduces him to the world of shades and reminds him of his vow of eternal fidelity. On awakening he sees his friends and the Rajah who wants to accompany him to his wedding.

Scene Five: In the temple
A ritual procession unites Gamzatti and Solor for their wedding ceremony. The dance of the lotus flowers with Solor`s friends and the dance of the Golden Idol are symbols of the good wishes for beauty and riches to the couple. In the ensuing dance of Solor with Gamzatti Nikiya shade takes part, visible only for Solor. Solor decides in favour of life, of Gamzatti. In the moment of the wedding oath to which the couple is summoned by the Great Brahmin there happens a earthquake. The temple falls in ruins and everybody is buried under them.

Scene Six: Apotheosis
In the world hereafter we see Solor, Nikiya and Gamzatti united in the picture of eternal light.

La Bayadère was first performed by the Imperial Ballet in the The Big Stone Theatre of Saint Petersburg in 1877. It is one of the most important works by Marius Petipa – the choreographer we associate immediately with Tchaikovsky ballets such as The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Nutcracker as well as with other classics like Don Quijote and Le Corsaire. The ballet takes place in an imaginary India whose geographicalidentity is not at all precisely defined. The drama surrounding the temple dancerNikiya, her rival, the Raja’s daughter Gamzatti, and Solor, who is loved by both women,  plays out here.

In 1998, the Bayerisches Staatsballett presented the German premiere of this piece in a staging by Patrice Bart, oriented on Marius Petipa’s original choreography and designed by Tomio Mohri. Since sources were far more difficult to access at the time, the final act was reconstructed on the basis of meticulous research, and missing parts in the music and choreography were filled in. The aesthetics in the stage and costume design are very much characterised by the artistic flair of the Japanese designer, Tomio Mohri. For this production, he on one hand used visual elements from the history of ballet, such as in the famous Shadows Act, in the parade of the betrothal celebrations or in the Golden Idol variation created by Nikolai Zubkovsky in 1948. On the other hand, we also see Tomio Mohri’s predilection for graphic elements of Japanese art in various scenes. Conceptually the piece’s fairy-tale character was front and centre for the artistic team surrounding Patrice Bart.

Attitudes towards the piece have changed drastically since the Munich premiere in 1998. La Bayadère is accused in today’s world of being a cliched representation of India and its religious and cultural practices. In recent years, colonialist interpretational schemata or orientalising presentation methods have been discussed intensely, resulting in higher problem awareness of to-date unquestioned presentation formats on theatre, opera and ballet stages. There were, for example, no temple dancers or bayadères in ancient India, but rather the women practised the art of a devadasi. They were incorporated into ritual practises and their task was anything but having to perform decorative dances. Western fantasies were projected on to them, which however had little to do with the lived reality.

From the 17th century on missionaries and the agents of the colonial powers exercised increasingly stronger influence and condemned the lifestyle of the devadasis, which could not be reconciled with the female role model of the day. The western-trained elites in India absorbed these perspectives and also began to reject their own cultural practices, which they perceived as backward, especially in light of the Indian independence movement of the time. With the support of such influential forces in society and politics, the Madras Devadasis Act was then enacted in 1947. Temple service was subsequently forbidden to women under threat of punishment.

On the basis of these only very briefly portrayed interrelationships of cultural references, projections and counter projections it is immediately clear how complex the situation becomes with regard to trade-offs between cultures, religions and nations. La Bayadère is a milestone in the history of ballet, which also raises a whole series of questions. Against this background, an in-depth examination of the historical legacy and the various motifs dealt with in the piece may provide a better understanding of formative influencing factors. Which historical references are the “right” ones, how they are to be interpreted and what their capital for the future constitutes is still today the subject matter of many an intensive debate. In La Bayadère’s history of reception, we find an extremely diverse echo of these discussions.

The Bayerisches Staatsballett believes a work such as La Bayadère not only motivates us to engage with the history of classical ballet, which is intrinsically linked with social, political and economic developments outside of the world of ballet. The question is also posed: How should and can intercultural phenomena be integrated into a theatrical composition anyway?

Future productions of La Bayadère will have to measure up to such considerations. They will have the opportunity to artistically formulate answers to questions that La Bayadère raises in today’s world.