Boston Ballet Revives a Classic

It is rare to see lost art come alive before your very eyes, but the Boston Ballet performs such a resurrection in this season’s revival of the 1877 classic Russian ballet “La Bayadère.” Beyond the ballet’s most famous scene, “The Kingdom of the Shades,” which has become a staple in the classical ballet repertoire, the show itself has been widely forgotten by most Western audiences. The Boston Ballet’s rendition of the somewhat less-famous piece in its entirety was a successful revival that brings it back into the modern era. The production runs through November 3.

The story follows Nikiya, the beautiful, virginal bayadère, or temple dancer, who has sworn her eternal love to Solor, the strong, handsome warrior. Solor is betrothed to the Rajah’s daughter Gamzatti, and the evil High Brahmin, smitten by Nikiya, schemes to keep her for himself. In a traditional plotline, the High Brahmin tries to kill Solor and Gamzatti fights Nikiya for Solor’s affection.

While the plot is not especially striking, the Boston Ballet’s portrayal of it takes an unconventional and stylized approach. The ballet is set in ancient India, and this Eastern influence permeates all aspects of the show, transforming this routine tale into a fantastical journey.

As with any ethnic-inspired performance, the show toes a fine line between tasteful nods to foreign cultures and racist reappropriations. For the most part, the Boston Ballet successfully navigates this tenuous dichotomy and uses nontraditional lines, movements, and motifs to make this lesser-known ballet relevant.

The most unusual and iconoclastic aspect of the performance is the unusual lines of the dancers’ bodies. Classical ballet is known for its clear, straight lines, where dancer’s arms and legs hit perfectly straight diagonals across the space. However, the choreographer of Bayadère, Florence Clerc uses Oriental-inspired arms to stylize the movement, giving the show a whimsical and ethereal quality. While this incorporation of non-Western dance technique is not unique to the show itself, Clerc’s interpretation of the theme was particularly memorable.

One of the most common and striking motifs in Clerc’s choreography is the flexed mudra hand. Rather than traditional splayed or relaxed ballet hands, throughout the show, Clerc has dancers hit a flexed-wrist, mudra position, where dancers touch their thumb to index finger. This subtle variation on the traditional ballet line is a simple yet effective nod to the show’s East Asian inspiration and reminds the audience of its whimsical and foreign nature.

Clerc also incorporates more contemporary fluid arm motions into the choreography, which she masterfully uses to extend the show’s otherworldly feel in a way that is more suggestive of modern dance than classical ballet. One of the best examples of this is the Fakir’s dance, where the temple slaves gather around the sacred fire. While the fire itself is never shown, the dancers lean into full back bends and wave their arms, visually representing the flames in a beautifully organic way.

Prima ballerina Lia Cirio also uses unconventional arm motions to extend the ballet’s ethereal feel. Her first entrance and solo as Nikiya are marked by simple choreography consisting of slow turns and bourrées. Clerc uses this uncomplicated choreography to draw the audience’s attention to Cirio’s smooth, undulating arms. These nontraditional lines also come back in Cirio’s pas de deux in Act II. As Cirio turns into an attitude, rather than raising her hands into the traditional fifth position, she laces her arms into an elegant swan dive, prayer position and slowly leans into a full ponché.

Visually, one of the most iconic moments of “La Bayadère” is the Golden Idol solo, here performed by Jeffrey Cirio. While the dance is barely three minutes long, it is by far one of the most striking and memorable pieces in the show. Cirio enters with Clerc’s flexed mudra hand positions and full gold body paint, which is reminiscent of depictions of East Asian deities. With phenomenal stage presence, he executes a series of breathtaking leaps and turns, starting with a powerful succession of turning double sous de chats, a quad tour, and ending with a series of rotating stag leaps. Throughout his solo, Cirio also hits several very sharp flexed-wrist mudra positions, further connecting the dance to the show’s overall Oriental motif.

However, “La Bayadère’s” costumes and makeup choices often play to racist tropes and fail to parallel the choreography’s subtle and tasteful references to East Asian cultures. The High Brahmin, the ballet’s main antagonist, is given slanted eyes, high cheekbones, a bald head, and long flowing robes—in short, nothing more than the horrendously racist Fu Manchu stereotype. Another number features a corps of what the show refers to as “Indian” dancers, all of whom wear ostentatiously fringed and feathered outfits and headdresses, which reappropriates the anachronistic Native American trope. Several performers have also darkened their skin in a blackface-esque manner, all of which feels inherently racially insensitive.

For the most part, the show successfully combines unconventional techniques to take a fresh spin on the choreography and revive this forgotten ballet. Clerc’s clever use of East Asian-inspired gestural phrases and motions challenges the classical ballet repertoire and ties the choreography together in a cohesive and elegantly iconoclastic fashion. Despite its off-putting racial caricatures, the Boston Ballet successfully brings this lesser-known show back to the forefront.

—Staff Writer Mason Hsieh can be reached at mason.hsieh@thecrimson.com.