La Bayadère


A friend called me this afternoon, we had not seen each other in months, and invited me to join her  and watch a performance of Bayadère the ninth life, a contemporary dance work choreographed by Shobana Jeyasingh. At first I politely declined - the theatre was miles away and it was such a foul day, with rain aplenty, and so cold that I needed to have the heating on at home (and it is May!).  But then I gave in, I had not seen my friend in ages and this particular dance was something that  really intrigued me - when it was premiered I was in Germany, so this was my only chance, as it was the  day before Jeyasingh's company went  to Exeter for the last leg of their tour. Off I went,  to Watford Palace Theatre.
I have known Shobana Jeyasingh from her days as a classical Bharata Natyam dancer. She turned into a choreographer in 1988 and since then she has made work that bears the stamp of her original Bharata Natyam training but is enriched and expanded with her knowledge of contemporary choreography, occasionally referencing more explicitly her Bharata Natyam roots.  She has won several awards for her creative approach  and has secured her place among the most successful UK choreographers since her company first began. Not a small feat.
I was really curious to see how she had approached one of the most famous and best loved 19th century classical ballet works, La Bayadère by Petipa with music by Minkus. And why she chose it. The answer to this  turns out to be quite straightforward. The piece springs from Jeyasingh's reflection on the incongruities of an orientalist jamboree that is the narrative of Petipa's  La Bayadere and her own choreography is actually a very beautiful and sensitive response to the romantic classicism of the original work, more so than I expected.


Jeyasingh's Bayadère begins with a young man sitting  on stage with his iPad telling us the story of Petipa's Bayadere through his blog.  "I went to see La Bayadere which was an interesting experience for me as an Indian" he begins and briefly the audience is told the story of Nikiya, the temple dancer and her lover prince Solor and princess Gamzatti who is bethrothed to Solor and who schemes to kill Nikiya through giving her a bouquet hiding a poisonous snake. The original ballet is set in an imaginary Indian court,  inspired by the real life court of the rajah of Golconda, where the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond, donated to Queen Victoria, came from.

The Koh-i-Noor diamond. Photo: Crown copyright

The most iconic moment in Petipa's ballet is Act III, also known as the Kingdom of the Shades, a kind of after life dream world ( a common trope in the Romantic -Classical ballets of the 19th century, think of Giselle) where we find Nikiya and Solor reunited, albeit briefly, and the Shades dancing around them. Jeyasingh's work is multilayered and the Kingdom of the Shades is presented to us to a soundtrack, spoken by an actor,  consisting of the original writings of Theophile Gautier, about the devadasi (temple dancer)  Amany, who was part of a group of them that had been brought to Europe on a tour, and with whom Gautier became infatuated. In the finale the dancers come out of the dream, so to speak, on into a more real, everyday, world, to a soundtrack by composer Gabriel Prokofiev that occasionally reminded me of Steve Reich's Different Trains .
The interrelated frames devised by Jeyasingh work very well, except that the last portion of the dance is perhaps a tad too long. For sixty minutes I was transported. I loved Jeyasingh's intelligent interpretation and her postcolonial critique was not lost on me. I also loved her references to Ingres' odalisques, interspersed in the middle section and her dancers were magnificent. Her bayadère was performed by a male dancer whose Bharata Natyam technique was superb - I love the gender inversion here which can be interpreted in more than one way.
If anything Jeyasingh's rendition has made me appreciate the 19th century ballet even more. I can't help being enticed by Petipa's Bayadère. The poetry of the Kingdom of the Shades remains unsurpassed, its music is haunting, the ballet choreography exquisite.
Petipa's La Bayadère: an orientalist pastiche it may be, but one that has held audiences spellbound for decades. Jeyasingh's task of deconstruction was most difficult and one which other choreographers would have found very daunting. She has definitely succeeded in turning it into a beautiful contemporary piece, with great elegance and panache.

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