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As is the case for most of Marius Petipa’s ballets, La Bayadère remained unknown in the West because the 1950 s’ «Iron Curtain» put a halt to all cultural exchanges.
The revelation came about in 1961, when the Kirov Ballet was on tour in Paris and London..
It was at the Palais Garnier that Act III of La Bayadère (The Kingdom of the Shades) unfolded its hypnotic procession of 32 bayadères in white tutus and veils – turned into ghosts (Shades) - as they slowly descend - one by one in a series of arabesques penchées - a slope that symbolises their appearance from the netherworld.
« The procession deploys its sinuous line across the stage before ending in four parallel rows, an impressive effect achieved with very little means. This scene marked the beginning of the symphonic ballet », wrote Vera Krassovskaya, a Russian Dance Historian.
All his life, Marius Petipa worked towards producing this « symphonic ballet », the perfect harmony between music and dance which is almost abstract, « graphic » (focussing on the groups’ lines and movements, geometrically occupying the stage space), as witnessed by the « Enchanted Garden » in The Corsair (1868), the Dryads scene in Don Quixote (1869), Aurora’s « vision » in Act II of Sleeping Beauty (1890), the snowflakes’ waltz at the end of Act I in The Nutcracker (1892) with Lev Ivanov, Acts II and IV of Swan Lake (1895) – again with Lev Ivanov – and the dream waltz in Act I of Raymonda (1898).
George Balanchine (1904 – 1893) followed in Petipa’s footsteps, translating music into movement. A certain number of contemporary chorographers also acknowledge the Kingdom of the Shades as the genesis for their « minimalist » quest. (Lucinda Childs’ ballet Dance (1979) - obsessionally identical and yet constantly changing - set to Philip Glass’ « repetitive » music is the perfect example of this). J.L.B.
* Apart from Sleeping Beauty performed by Serge Diaghilev’s « Ballets Russes » in London in 1921 and extracts from Swan Lake (Act II), mounted at the Paris Opera by Serge Lifar in 1936 and by Victor Gsofsky in 1946 (cf. Sleeping Beauty, cf Swan Lake).
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