La Bayadère

The choreographer’s thoughts

Marius Petipa created the choreography for La Bayadère in 1877 for the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Theatre (today’s Mariinsky Theatre). It was a four-act classical ballet with the lavish grandeur befitting the Tsarist era. At the time, both the St Petersburg theatre and the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre shared the same director. In 1904, following a suggestion by ballet master Alexander Gorsky, La Bayadère, which had already been performed successfully in St Petersburg for years, was also introduced in Moscow. However, the sets were not produced a second time; instead, the existing ones were transported between the two cities. The risks of this transportation were clearly illustrated by an incident in 1907 that significantly influenced the fate of the ballet: the set for the fourth act failed to arrive at the venue in time for a performance.

Gorsky had to act quickly, the audience could not be let down. There was no choice but to conclude the piece with the third act. The curtain fell in the Kingdom of the Shades; Solor, the protagonist, never awoke from his opium-induced delirium. This improvised ending continued to be used in later performances, and by 1920, the original fourth act, with its happy ending, had disappeared completely. In the final decades of the 20th century, distinguished choreographers such as Natalia Makarova and Patrice Bart revived the missing scenes. We are now preparing a version that does not end in the Kingdom of the Shades. I am working on staging the “lost” scenes and developing the concept based on the original libretto, and I am creating the choreography myself.

The Kingdom of the Shades is a highly spectacular and beautiful scene, but from a dramaturgical and logical standpoint, it does not conclude the story. Solor consumes opium and, in a narcotic dream sequence, reunites with his deceased lover, Nikiya. However, he never awakens from the dream. If the story ends here, the narrative threads remain unresolved. In the 2025 version, we return to reality in the brief, roughly fifteen-minute closing scenes. Solor is preparing to marry Gamzatti. However, the god Vishnu avenges the poisoning of Nikiya, the bayadere, and the lovers’ souls are united in eternity. In our production, the third act is followed immediately by the final part, without an intermission.

In 1883, a now-forgotten ballet titled Nuit et jour (Night and Day), by Marius Petipa and Ludwig Minkus, was composed for the coronation of Tsar Alexander III. Only the piano transcription of the work has survived. I handed it to György Lázár, and together we selected the parts that best complemented the existing music of La Bayadère. For instance, we included a section in the second act’s pas d’action block, for which I created a male duet, and a lyrical excerpt placed just before the ballet’s final dramatic scene, offering a strong musical contrast. György Lázár also prepared the orchestral arrangement. He studied the entire work and, staying true to the composer’s style and using the existing score as a foundation, re-composed the missing segments. He did a magnificent job!

The production features exciting characters, the artists perform in beautiful costumes, and the visual spectacle is lavish. The principal dancers showcase their finest technical and acting skills. Interestingly, in Petipa’s time, male dancers had no solo parts, Solor’s variation, for example, was later added to the ballet by Chabukiani. This is a classical ballet, requiring the highest level of technique during the pas d’action, but character roles, modes of expression, and acting are also crucial. One of the ballet’s most distinctive features is undoubtedly the Kingdom of the Shades. This is the scene where 32 ballerinas dance simultaneously, it’s mesmerising how synchronised their movements are. A large ensemble is essential to stage La Bayadère, such as that of the Hungarian National Ballet.

Albert Mirzoyan

The exotic sources of La Bayadère

Since the Age of Discovery, Europe has demonstrated a lively interest in the fabulous wealth, the exotic stories and the fascinating world of the Orient. The intensity of this interest has changed with the centuries, but it has never ceased to exist. At the time of Romanticism, the influence of Indian culture on European art grew again. Naturally, authors sought to build upon details that stirred their imagination rather than straining for authenticity. In Goethe’s ballad The God and the Bayadere (Der Gott und die Bajadere), the dancer fails to recognize the god Shiva who appears in human form and falls in love with him. When morning comes, the god is no longer seen, only the human corpse he has left behind. Obsessed with grief, the bayadere throws herself on the pyre and when she dies, she meets the god again. Schubert intended to put Goethe’s ballad to music, but in 1830 it was Auber whose opera was first performed under the same title in Paris.

It was suggested earlier that the bayadere reflects the figure of Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, but the renowned researcher Roland John Wiley has proved that there is no direct connection. The original story tells that during a hunt, King Dushyanta falls in love with Shakuntala and gives her a ring with a proposal of marriage. The girl sets off to find the king, but loses the ring while bathing in a river. The king thus does not recognize his love, and Shakuntala returns to the forest to give birth to their child. Meanwhile, a fisherman catches the fish that has swallowed up the ring. Seeing the token ring, the King remembers his earlier promises and returns to the forest to find Shakuntala. This short account proves that the only connection between the two stories is the oath of love sworn during the hunt.

French orientalist Antoine-Leonard Chezy (1773–1832) published a translation of the Sanskrit poem under the title La reconnaissance de Sacountala. This, together with the European tour of an authentic Indian troupe of dancers – whose principal dancer, Amani, committed suicide in her grief – inspired Theophile Gautier to write the libretto. Building on Ernest Reyer’s music, Lucien Petipa transposed the poem into dance: Sacountala was performed at the Paris Opera in 1858. Before and after the birth of La Bayadère, several ballets and operas had exotic – oriental, as well as ancient – locales. Amongst the most outstanding ballets, La Peri (Burgmuller–Coralli, 1844) is set in India, The Pharaoh’s Daughter (Pugni–Petipa, 1862) in Egypt, and King Candaules (Pugni–Petipa, 1868) in ancient Greece. Much later, Fokin contributed to the staging of Cleopatra (1909, music by Arensky) and Sheherezade (1910, music by Rimsky-Korsakov). Though far from being exhaustive, we should also mention operas like Delibes’s Lakmé (1883) set in India, or Verdi’s Aida (1871). La Bayadère (Baiaderka in Russian) was first performed in the Bolshoi Theatre in St. Petersburg on 4 February (O. S. 23 January, according to the Russian calendar) 1877. The word ‘bayadere’ comes from Portuguese and has the same meaning as the Sanskrit ‘devadasi’: Hindu temple dancer. Using his own ideas and Sergei Khudekov’s libretto, Marius Petipa prepared a ballet in four acts and seven scenes.

Márk Gara

The fate of the ballet in the 20th century

Since it would be fruitless to list all the reductions and changes La Bayadère has had to go through in the last century, only the most significant ones are mentioned. Although La Bayadère was never entirely dropped from the repertoires of the Imperial Theatres, Petipa himself decided to revive the ballet in 1900. After Petipa (but still during his lifetime), it was Gorsky who made the first modifications in Moscow in 1904. Later changes aimed at rendering the decor more authentic, or various parts were removed. The great flood of St. Petersburg is often blamed for the disappearance of the entire fourth act in 1920, though some people think that it was the emerging Soviet regime that banned the last act which displays divine punishment. Therefore, Cyril W. Beaumont could give an account of only 5 out of the 7 original scenes in his 1937 book.

Vladimir Ponomarev modified the ballet in 1941, which featured Natalia Dudinskaya and Vakhtang Chabukiani as the lovers. The pas de deux of Act I, which depicts their flaming love, was created especially for the two dancers. It was Chabukiani who mounted the Solor variation still seen on stage today. In 1948, the ballet was enriched when the variation of the Golden (or Bronze) Idol was inserted. Nikolai Zubkovsky’s choreography is now one of the best-known parts of the ballet, which is usually included in the divertissement of Act II (Nureyev) or in the last scene (Makarova). The music used by Zubkovsky was Minkus’s Persian March, originally composed for the ballet Le Papillon.

La Bayadère did not cross the borders of Russia or the Soviet Union until the 1960s. In the Khrushchevian era of detente, however, the Western world could see part of the ballet when the Kirov Ballet performed The Kingdom of the Shades as a one-act ballet in London and New York in 1961. During the 1961 Kirov tour, while the company was still in Paris, Rudolf Nureyev (1938–1993) asked for political asylum. In 1963, he staged The Kingdom of the Shades in London using his own recollections. He danced the leading part as the partner of the legendary English ballerina Margot Fonteyn (1919–1991).

Later another world-famous dancer, Natalia Makarova also defected from the Soviet Union and staged The Kingdom of the Shades (1974, with Cyntia Harve and Ivan Nagy) and later, in 1980 the full-length ballet for the American Ballet Theatre in the USA. This version, known as Makarova’s production, is the most popular one in the world. It is performed on the stages of London, Stockholm and Milan. Its great advantage lies in the fact that it follows the entire plot from the first sparks of love until the divine ordeal, i.e. the destruction of the temple. Makarova wished to lay emphasis on the dramatic character of the ballet and the dance while omitting much of the mime. The balanced dramaturgy of La Bayadère is able to captivate the attention of the audience and – in case of the presence of excellent soloists – provide a lifelong experience.

The next milestone was the premiere in Paris. The mortally ill Nureyev chose La Bayadère as his swan song. His production is largely based on the 1900 version, though he omitted Act IV. Enthusiastic about telling a story with gestures, Nureyev preserved much of the mime, but it was properly counterbalanced by the extraordinarily refined technique and the graceful performance of the Ballet of the Paris Opera. Nureyev included several passages of the male corps de ballet and recreated the dances of the grand divertissement mostly neglected in Makarova’s production. The Parrot Dance, the Danse Manu and the Danse Infernale were mounted again. Since the last scene in Nureyev’s production is that of The Kingdom of the Shades, the Golden Idol’s variation is included in the grand divertissement.

In 2002, Sergei Vikharev reconstructed this version for the Kirov Ballet using the only available authentic document, the Stepanov notation. Critics deemed the performance interesting from a historical perspective but pointed out that the great number of detailed mimes resulted in a marathon playing time of 3 hours and 50 minutes, which is too demanding for the 21st-century audience. The variation of the Bronze (Golden) Idol disappeared from the ballet, but Vikharev inserted a part after the Kingdom of the Shades scene where Solor is woken up, and the entire Act IV was renewed. Vikharev admitted in an interview that his greatest pride was the Dance of the Lotus Blossoms of Act IV.

The ballet company of the Hungarian State Opera introduced the “white scene of La Bayadère under the title Dance of the Shades on 23 October 1976. It was not a unique enterprise those days: in the 1960’s and 70’s it was mainly this part of La Bayadère which was performed around the world. The piece was rehearsed by N. V. Baltacheyeva and A. L. Kumisnikov with Eva Ehn’s assistance just some months before the 100^th anniversary of the premiere of the original ballet. The costumes were designed by Tivadar Mark, the set designer was Attila Csikós, and the conductors were Janos Sandor and Gedeon Frater. Dance of the Shades was only performed on nine occasions – on the last one the world-famous ballerina of Hungarian origin, Maina Gielgud danced Nikiya’s role. Unfortunately, the Dance of the Shades was not later integrated into the Hungarian repertoire.

Until the 2008 production of the Hungarian National Ballet, La Bayadère had been performed just once – although an abridged version, it was still the most complete performance until the 2008 premiere. The occasion was the final examination concert of the Hungarian Dance Academy in 1998. Rehearsed by Flora Kajdani and staged by Imre Dózsa and Katalin Sebestény, this performance consisted of two scenes: Gamzatti’s and Solor’s wedding and The Kingdom of the Shades. Since 2025, the production features the lost parts reconstructed by Albert Mirzoyan.

Márk Gara