Locating La Bayadère

Yet as a product of nineteenth-century Russian culture, La Bayadère was very much a reflection of its time and place. As ballet waned in the more democratic nation states of Europe, the imperial ballet flourished in autocratic Russia. These ballets were commissioned and overseen by the Imperial Theatre Directorate and funded by the Tsar’s household budget. As such, they were a direct reflection of the aesthetic tastes and political agendas of the reigning tsar and Russia’s ruling elite.

With its spectacular setting and imperialist reach, La Bayadère was a perfect vehicle for showcasing Russia as a major player in the European arena. Its premiere in 1877 coincided with two moments of historical significance. The first was the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, in which Russia saw itself as a savior of its pan-Slavic Christian brothers; and the second was the late-nineteenth-century British anxiety about Russia’s presence in Central Asia and its potential invasion of India. As Russia expanded into Central Asia, and Britain consolidated its position in India, the two empires came into increasing competition for influence in the region. Thus, the depiction of a Hindu temple dancer emphasized Russia’s European, Christian identity, while the balletic representation of chess referenced the rivalry between Russia and Britain during the peak of the Great Game.

In his 1896 book Our Ballet, Alexander Plescheev described the ballet’s defining fusion of classical and character dance: “M[arius] Petipa displayed all his qualities again in their full glory. . . S[ergei] N[ikolaevich] Khudekov, the author of the libretto, offers … a canvas for beautiful, typical oriental dances, groups, and tableaux—then delves into the realm of fantasy, demonstrating the breadth of classical dance. The action unfolds in India during a ‘Festival of Fire’… There are voluptuous bayadères, flagellating fakirs, jumping though fires, and so on. In the ballet there is a whole series of character dances, for example … the ‘Hindu Dance,’ utterly wild in character. . . The success of La Bayadère was complete.”

The four-act ballet with seven scenes and an apotheosis debuted at the benefit performance of Russian prima ballerina Ekaterina Vazem, who recalled in her memoirs: “Of all my created roles, Nikiya was my favorite. I liked this ballet for its beautiful and very theatrical libretto, for its interesting and colorful dances in various genres, and for its music by [Ludwig] Minkus.”

In its portrayal of devadasis, or servants of god, La Bayadère was rooted in the French orientalist tradition inherited by Petipa. The word bayadère, a French translation of the Portuguese word bailadeira, reveals the European lens through which the devadasi tradition was viewed. The thirteenth-century travel accounts of Marco Polo introduced European society to the unique position occupied by devadasis. Trained in classical dance and educated in the arts, these temple dancers were dedicated to a deity, possessed distinct legal rights including property ownership, and transcended caste boundaries.

With Muslim, Sikh, and British colonial influences in northern India, however, devadasis were increasingly marginalized and maligned as prostitutes subordinated by corrupt priests. The tradition continued to flourish in southern India, and a troupe of devidasis from Puducherry toured Europe in 1838. Accompanied by three male musicians, the group of five dancers from the ages of six to thirty arrived first in Bordeaux, France, where they attended a performance of the opera-ballet Le Dieu et la Bayadère. This 1830 work featured the music of Daniel Auber, the choreography of Filippo Taglioni, and the dancing of Marie Taglioni as the bayadère who spurns the attentions of the Grand Judge of Cashmere for the love of a stranger who turns out to be the god Brahma in disguise. As punishment, Taglioni’s bayadère is sentenced to death by fire, but Brahma intervenes, and the immortal lovers ascend to the heavens.

Following their ballet-going in Bordeaux, the real-life bayadères performed to great public acclaim in Paris, were honored with a command performance for King Louis Philippe, and inspired the ballet critic and librettist Théophile Gautier to write: “The very word bayadère evokes notions of sunshine, perfume, and beauty. . . Until now bayadères had remained a poetic mystery like the houris of Muhammad’s paradise. They were remote, splendid, fairylike, fascinating. This scented poetry that—like all poetry—existed only in our dreams, has now been brought to us.”

The craze for bayadères continued with Lucien Petipa’s 1858 ballet Sacountala, featuring a libretto by Gautier that adapted the play of the classical Sanskrit poet Kalidasa. In Sacountala, the heroine-bayadère becomes enamored of the King of India, while hunting in a sacred forest along the banks of the Malini River. Tragically, their love is cursed by a vindictive fakir: when the bayadère travels to the palace, the King no longer recognizes her and the Queen Hamsati sentences her to death by fire. Fortuitously, the King’s memory is restored; a celestial dancer, or apsara, saves the bayadère from a fiery death; and the two lovers are united in a pas de deux illuminated by the mystical light of a swarm of apsaras encircling the stage. According to Soviet ballet scholar Yuri Slonimsky, Petipa viewed his elder brother’s ballet in Paris and familiarized himself with the related material prior to the staging of his own La Bayadère.

Petipa’s La Bayadère drew not only on the works of his predecessors but also on his own choreographic canon. Indeed, the Russian imperial vision of India did not vary greatly from that of Egypt, depicted in Petipa’s 1862 ballet The Pharaoh’s Daughter with an equally lush landscape inhabited by lions, tigers, and serpents. Petipa revived and recycled orientalist motifs from his oeuvre in full length ballets such as Talisman (1889), set in India and described by Ballets Russes member Alexander Benois as greatly resembling La Bayadère, as well as in opera. As such, the success of La Bayadère prompted Petipa to feature the dances of bayadères in operas with settings that varied from tenth-century Jerusalem, to the seventeenth-century Mughal empire, to India during the British Raj, to the Caucasus under Russian rule.

The most profound connection between The Pharaoh’s Daughter and La Bayadère, however, occurs in the vision sequence that constitutes the central scenes of Petipa’s Egyptian-styled ballet and the most famous scene, “The Kingdom of the Shades,” of his Indian-themed ballet. Petipa transforms a British aristocrat, Lord Wilson, into an ancient Egyptian, Ta-Hor, in the opium-fueled dream of The Pharaoh’s Daughter.  Similarly, La Bayadère’s Solor, overcome by remorse for the death of Nikiya, seeks solace in the hallucinatory effects of opium. In La Bayadère, however, Petipa inverts the narrative: while the vision of Lord Wilson reflects the colonialist fantasy of “going native,” Solor’s dream transforms the colorful troupe of temple dancers into the white-clad shades of the European Romantic tradition.

While Petipa’s original 1877 production and his 1900 revival concluded with the marriage ceremony of Solor and Gamzatti and the destruction of the temple in retribution for Nikiya’s death, most twentieth-century versions ended on the vision of a unified, Europeanized corps de ballet in “The Kingdom of the Shades.” While this choice may have stemmed in part from the technical limitations of lost sets and the expense of elaborate stage effects, the excision of the fourth act feels ideological. By concluding the ballet with “The Kingdom of the Shades,” which resurrected the ballet blanc tradition of Robert le Diable (1831) and Giselle (1841), twentieth-century interpretations of La Bayadère achieved a veritable apotheosis of European culture.

Natalia Makarova’s reimagining of the lost last act for American Ballet Theatre in 1980, the Royal Ballet in 1989, and the Norwegian National Ballet premiere in 2019 restores the frame, orientalist though it may be, of the original ballet and reestablishes the focus on the narrative plight of two lovers of different worlds, separated by the symbolic divide of the sacred and the secular, the ideal and the real.

As contemporary companies seek new ways to keep classical ballets in the repertoire, the two-part process of education and evaluation—acknowledging imperialist implications and assessing artistic sources—will endow artists and audiences enamored of ballet’s past with the potential tools to transform its future.

Dr. Natalie Rouland
17 March 2022