"La Baydère"
Marinsky Ballet
Cal Performances
Zellerback Hall
Berkeley, California
October 30, 2019
by Rita Felciano
copyright 2019 by Rita Felciano
What a magnificent, somewhat cumbersome fantasy “La Bayadère” is. In the recent Mariinsky Ballet performance at Cal Performances with a cast of, apparently, two hundred, and an orchestra that just about spilled out of the pit, the dancing was superb, the story telling clear and beautifully spaced, the mime large and much welcome. So there were few a missteps, a couple of errant balances; that is and was expected in a live performance. Yet it was so much fun to see the transition from the Romantic story ballet to the pure Classicism of the Ballet Blanc in the same evening. The story ballet just about dissolved in what is here the last act. We entered the realm of pure beauty.
But for all its fantasy, just like in its model “Giselle,” ”Bayadère” also embodies a dose of hard-nosed reality. It’s only in fairy tales that the poor boy gets the princess. In life the peasant girl on the assembly line doesn’t marry the factory owner’s son. Maybe in 1877 the implicit critique of corruption in religious and secular powers – the High Brahmin and the Rajah — also could be downplayed as “it’s just a story.” But we live in a more skeptical age.
Maria Khoreva in "La Bayadère". Photo: Natasha Razina