The Kirov's La Bayadere in DC

(The Kirov Ballet, bowing after the Kingdom of the Shades. Photo: Me)

About halfway through the Kirov corps de ballet's performance of the entrance of the Shades, during Saturday afternoon's showing of La Bayadere at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, I decided that the entire trip had been completely worth it - the flying across the country, the subjecting of my thin Southern Californian blood to an east coast winter, the whole bit.

The Kingdom of the Shades scene is sublime in its simplicity. The entrance consists of the same small string of academic ballet steps over and over, the whole line of thirty-two women slowly snaking their way down the stage with a plunge into arabesque penchee (leg up behind on slightly bent supporting leg), pose up leaning back, step step step, then repeated continually for four minutes. The stage is lit in pale blue and the dancers are costumed in plain white tutus, and the music sets a plaintive and beautiful background. After all of the shades have arrived on stage, there comes a prolonged meditation on pure classical steps and poses, performed in a straightforward, exposed manner. It is all basically classroom steps and exercises, but arranged and presented the way that they are, it becomes a supreme statement of classical ballet and a visually hypnotic feast. The sum transcends its simple parts - the effect is thrilling.

Performed by the Kirov Ballet (a.k.a. Mariinsky Ballet as the are properly known at home in Russia - they tour the West as the Kirov), the Shades scene becomes even more thrilling because the company's corps moves together with the same, unforced impulse: they don't look robotic and over drilled, each dancer seems to individually step expansively into each step - all together and all as one, like speaking a native language. There's no comparison to the Kirov's Shades scene (I first saw them do it five years ago at the Kodak in Hollywood) - American Ballet Theatre and even my beloved Royal Ballet do admirable estimations of the scene, but their women look effortful and rehearsed. Their end result doesn't begin to approach the clarity and lightness that the Kirov brings to this scene. So, definitely, the Kirov's was a performance worth traveling for.

(Act 2 of La Bayadere. Photo: Kirov Ballet)

The Shades never disappoint, as many times as I have seen La Bayadere - it's the other two acts that can be a liability. They can be ridiculous, muddled, hammy, and boring, frequently combinations of several. And they're a bit odd, too, by today's standards. Set in an Orientalist, 19th century European vision of ancient India, the ballet is filled with broad, politically incorrect stereotypes, like a scraggly native population that flails around like forest animals, sexy, nubile temple dancers and ruthless Rajahs (some versions that are still performed in Russia include little black face children doing minstrel-like black face dances - thankfully these children were absent from the Kirov's DC tour). It can be bizarre, but most productions today tend to disregard anything really South Asian: best to think of the culture on stage as a nameless, fantasy Indiana Jones-type civilization, lost in the jungle.

The story is of a temple dancer named Nikiya, the titular bayadere, and her beloved, the warrior hero Solor. The Rajah, Solor's boss, wants Solor to wed his daughter Gamzatti, and forces Solor into an engagement. However, Solor and Nikiya have already sworn their love to one another over the sacred temple fire. To eliminate Nikiya from the picture, Gamzatti and the Rajah give Nikiya a basket of flowers with a poisonous snake hidden inside - when Nikiya dances with the flowers at Solor and Gamzatti's betrothal ceremony, the snake bites her and she dies. The Kingdom of the Shades scene comes when Solor, despairing over Nikiya's death, smokes an opium pipe and dreams of seeing her ghostly shade (and all the bunches of others) in the afterlife. On top of the corps' role in The Kingdom of the Shades, Nikiya's dancing in this act provides a gorgeous example of sustained adage dancing; the pas d'action where Nikiya's shade first encounters Solor is an eagerly anticipated moment in the ballet.

The narrative ends here in the Kirov production. In the original and several other productions (notably the ABT and Royal productions by Natalia Makarova), Solor awakens from his dream and is summoned to the temple for his wedding to Gamzatti. As the wedding takes place, the gods collapse the temple in retaliation for Solor's infidelity and Gamzatti's trickery, and everyone inside dies. Solor and Nikiya are reunited in the afterlife. And yes, it's a little odd that the Kirov production doesn't bother to complete the story. The Kirov's rather bloated version keeps a bunch of divertissements and parades that have been added over the years (there's an overexuberant "native population" drum dance in the middle of the wedding scene that has always unnerved me - they don't look like any South Asians I have ever seen). Makarova's production, to me, works best as a full-evening dance drama. She pares it down to the essential plot elements and shaves away the extraneous divertisements; Acts 1 & 2 from the Kirov version are condensed into a swift, three-scene act, the Kingdom of the Shades becomes a centerpiece, and a brief final act is added to properly wrap up the story.

But really, it's not the story that keeps balletomanes returning to La Bayadere. You go to Bayadere and hope that the principal dancers will transcend the melodrama in the plot, and carry you over into the Kingdom of the Shades. This ballet is all about the purity of the Shades scene's plotless classicism and the stellar corps work. Icing on the cake is a few of the choreographic gems buried in the other acts: Nikiya's solemn fire dance in Act 1, the flashy Grand Pas de Deux for Gamzatti and Solor in Act 2. Oh, and let's not forget the deliciously melodramatic cat fight between Gamzatti and Nikiya at the end of the first act (we love some of the ham).

I saw two casts in Washington: the Saturday afternoon (Jan 26, 1:30pm) performance was led by Uliana Lopatkina and Ivan Kozlov. Lopatkina is an exquisitely lyrical dancer, and her Nikiya was, as expected, one of exceptional dignity and grace. What her performance lacks in theatrical spontaneity was made up for in deliberate nobility: her temple fire dance is planned down to the smallest ripple of her arm, but darned if it wasn't poetic and beautiful. And in the face of Gamzatti's adversity, she never lost her royal bearing. Her trademark lyricism made the Shades scene gorgeous to watch. She didn't show off with flashy tricks or six o'clock extensions, but the way she slowly prolonged the steps and wrapped her body around the wilting music was breathtaking. (Compare these comments to the ones I made last year about her Swan Lake). Kozlov was a tall and handsome Solor. The role as it stands in the Kirov production doesn't require him to do much by way of dancing - its more of a partnering role - but he was always dramatically present in the pantomime scenes, a feat considering that I often see Solors sleep walk through the ballet. His chance to shine in the Grand Pas de Deux variation and the coda of the Shades act showed that he is capable of high jumps and tricks in the technical department, though neither moment lasts long enough to make any judgement on his individual dance ability. This ballet belongs to the women.

At the evening performance (Jan 26, 7:30pm), Viktoria Tereshkina and Anton Korsakov led the charge. Tereshkina was a decidedly more sensual Nikiya than Lopatkina's regal one, particularly in Act 1 over the temple fire. The Nikiya costume is basically a bikini top and a gauzy skirt: where Lopatkina still managed to carry it off like she was fully clothed in court dinner dress, Tereshkina slivered seductively in it, showing off her well-toned abdomen and giving Nikiya a hot blooded urgency. By the Kingdom of the Shades, things had toned back down to a calmer classical tutu level, but Tereshkina's ghostly shade still carried a certain glamor. Her technical strength - high jumps, quick turns and legs that she can hold very high - made the Shades adage an impressive sight, though I'd complain that her tendency to throw her leg just that little bit too high sometimes destroyed the simple beauty of the moment: in arabesque with her leg held higher than usual behind her, the tutu twice flopped over onto her back. Korsakov's Solor was an eager beaver of a warrior, always enthusiastic to please Nikiya and even the Rajah, until he realizes what he has gotten himself into. Korsakov the dancer was also a bit too eager to please the audience, holding poses for too long to milk applause, pandering in his variations to show how much effort he is putting into his tricks, even as impressive as they were. He needed to calm down and present more of Solor's turmoil and nobility, to match Nikiya in the Shades.

The villainess Gamzatti role can be pretty fun since it is almost all about being bitchy in Act 1, then showing off with the technical flash in Act 2's Grand Pas de Deux. Tatiana Tkachenko is a dancer that I've always enjoyed watching for the detailed acting she usually brings to her roles (her Medora in DC two years ago was great for the details). Her Gamzatti on Saturday afternoon was regal and entitled, a Paris Hilton-type who turns icy cold when someone steps into her way, which made the catfight with Lopatkina very fun. However, Tkachenko's Grand Pas de Deux was not as clean or flashy as it should have been; turns were a bit out of control and meandered around the stage instead of staying in line, jumps were clean but not flashy enough to establish technical dominance over the demi-soloists around her. At the evening show, Irina Golub gave us all the flash we could possibly want, in a small compact package with her short frame. Her Act 2 variation was flawless and sparkling. She's just so cute, though, so the catfight in Act 1 against a Tereshkina's passionate and hot blooded Nikiya didn't rise to the level that it could have. The three soloists in the Shades scene, who each have their own short variation, were Olesya Novikova, Nadejda Gonchar and Ekaterina Kondaurova. They displayed the typical Kirov penchant for strong technique and high extensions, but remained fairly faceless in their dancing.

Still, these performances belonged to the Kirov's corps de ballet, which doesn't often get the spotlight behind the company's starry principals. Other companies do the Kingdom of the Shades, but no one does it with nearly the same confidence and easy splendor as the Kirov.

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More pictures that I took:

(1) The Bayadere poster at the Kennedy Center, with a "Sold Out" sticker sniped over the bottom. (2) Uliana Lopatkina bows after Act 2 in her betrothal scene costume, with Vladimir Ponomarev as the High Brahmin. (3) Lopatkina and Ivan Kozlov at the end of the show, in front of the Kennedy Center's gorgeous red curtain. (4) Viktoria Tereshkina and Anton Korsakov. (5) The three Shades soloists, Olesya Novikova, Nadejda Gonchar and Ekaterina Kondaurova.

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Side note: I loved the Kennedy Center's Opera House. I've been in there before but mostly running around in the orchestra - over the weekend I was in the last row of the highest tier and I still didn't feel all that far away. A very nice, intimate view that wasn't too high and wasn't too far back either. It's an especially nice feeling when you compare it to similar seats at other large theaters, like the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion or the Metropolitan Opera House. The Kennedy Center seats are more expensive than the cheapest ones at those other houses, but it's all made up for in the intimacy of the experience. The seats are also quite comfy (a product of the Opera House's recent renovation), and the chandeliers are quite grand and lovely to look at.

What else did I do on my quick trip? On Sunday, I walked around the National Mall for a bit, then had a late lunch in Cleveland Park with some old friends. We ended up spending three and a half hours together and didn't realize it until we looked outside and it was suddenly dark. It was the best kind of mini reunion. I returned to Los Angeles later that night feeling refreshed and invigorated. But now I've been back to work for three days and it's back to nightmare overtime craziness. Hopefully the end to that will come soon, now that they are finally hiring for our missing position!