La Bayadère ("The Temple Dancer") ballet. Music by Ludwig Minkus. Choreography by Nacho Duato after Marius Petipa. Performed 2019 at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. Stars Angelina Vorontsova (Nikiya, the Lead Bayadère); Victor Lebedev (Solor); Sergey Strelkov (The High Brahmin); Andrey Kasyanenko (Dugmanta, the Rajah); Andrea Laššáková (Gamzatti); Nikita Tchetverikov (Bronze Idol); Olga Poryvko (Aya); Andrey Yakhnyuk (Magedaveya, a Fakir); Victoria Zaripova and Marina Korotchenkova (D’Jampe); Victor Lebedev, Andrea Laššáková, Debora Davis, Yulia Lukyanenko, Ekaterina Odarenko, Ella Persson (Grand Pas Classique); Tatiana Miltseva and Andrey Yakhnyuk (Drummers); Svetlana Bednenko, Andrea Laššáková, and Yulia Lukyanenko (Three Shades); Olga Arsenina (First Variation), and dancers of the Mikhailovsky Ballet (Bayadères, Fakirs, Dancers, Guests, Guards, and Shades). Pavel Sorokin conducts the Orchestra of the Mikhailovsky Theatre. Stage and costume design by Angelina Atlagić; lighting design by Brad Fields; artistic director for the Mikhailovsky Theatre was Vladimir Kekhman. Directed for TV by Andy Sommer; produced by François Duplat. Released 2020. Grade: A
Before I got this disc to review, I’d never heard of the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. I thought ballet in Saint Petersburg resided at the Mariinsky Theater, which has something like 587 dancers on the payroll. Well, be aware that the Mikhailovsky Theatre ballet has about 120 dancers. In the month of January, 2021 they will perform The Nutcracker, a Ballet Gala, La Bayadère (subject title), Laurencia ballet, Spartacus, Don Quixote, Swan Lake, La Fille mal gardee, and Giselle! The dancers at the Mikhailovsky get plenty of stage time! According to their Artistic Director Vladimir Kekhman, the Theater (opera, ballet, symphony, and chamber groups) has about 300,000 patrons who attend shows with some regularity. They are the only ballet in Russia with a westerner as choreographer (Nacho Duato). Kekhman say, “We are the people’s ballet in Saint Peterburg.” This is not warmed-over Communist propaganda—the Mikhailovsky appears to be where the people of the town can afford to see the arts that the Russians love so much.
All this suggests how little we in the West know about today’s Eastern European (former USSR) theater scene. BelAir is trying to help correct this by publishing Blu-ray discs of performances from the East. This La Bayadère is by far the best Eastern title BelAir has brought us so far from companies other than the Bolshoi.
Time for pictures. We open with the High Brahmin (Sergey Strelkov) and his temple dancers in an evening ritual. Notice what beautiful PQ and color Sommers gets with his camera:
I think all these dancers are bayadéres; The Bayadére (Angelina Vorontsova) is the lead dancer. Here we will call her Nikiya. One of Nikiya’s duties is to give drinking water to the fakirs, here the head fakir Magedaveya (Andrey Yakhnyuk):
The High Brahmin is sincerely enamored of Nikiya, but she refuses his attentions:
Nikiya loves Solor (Victor Lebedev), the great warrior and hunter:
Solor pledges his love to Nikiya. Note in all these images so far how Sommers manages to get beautiful pictures of all the dancers even on the mostly dark stage. I suspect that Sommers has the very latest recording gear and got full cooperation also from the lighting crew:
Now the scene shifts to the palace of the Rajah. Some of his wives entertain the Rajah and his court with the D’Jampe dance:
The Rajah (Andrey Kasyanenko) wants his daughter Gamzatti (Andrea Laššáková) to marry Solor:
When the Rajah offers his daughter’s hand in marriage to Solor, the hero appears conflicted at first. But soon the fabulous prospects of joining the ruler’s family lead Solor to abandon his pledge to Nikiya:
The High Brahmin should just keep his mouth shut, and then he will have better chance with Nikiya. But he feels he must warn the Rajah that Solor already has a commitment. Only later does he realize that this situation could be dangerous for Nikiya!
Gamzatti learns about Solor’s pledge to Nikiya. Gamzatti tries to bribe Nikiya to step out of the way. Nikiya fights back with a knife, but the slave Aya (Olga Poryvko) breaks up the brawl:
Now we are at the Royal Court for a party celebrating the engagement of Gamzatti and Solar. The sets and costumes were designed by Angelina Atlagić, who also designed the excellent Sleeping Beauty show for Nacho Duato when he was choreographer the Staatsballett Berlin:
H’m . . . more of the Maxfield Parrish look from Atlagić and Duato. Check out the similar courtroom scene in Duato’s Sleeping Beauty ballet. Compare the shot above and several below to the image next shown of another famous Parrish painting, which just happens to be called “Sleeping Beauty”:
Next below Nikita Tchetverikov in the famous Bronze Idol dance:
More dancing acts:
From the grand pas de deux:
Nikiya has to top off the festivities with her sacred dance to bless the engaged couple. She can’t hide her grief at the loss of Solor. This shot from Sommers almost looks like a grand master painting you might see in an art museum. To the right of Nikiya in the shadows the Rajah speaks to Gamzatti’s slave Aya. He is telling Aya to have a certain special basket of flowers given to Nikiya for the end of her dance routine:
Gamzatti gloats:
The Bayadére’s dance calls for her to smell the flowers and dedicate them to the happy couple by strewing the petals on the floor at their feet. When Nikiya is smelling the blossoms, the venomous snake strikes!
With a snakebite so close to her head, Nikiya doesn’t have much time. The High Brahmin gives Nikiya an antidote to the poison, but Nikiya elects to die:
Solor is filled with remorse and smokes opium. In his delirium, he sees a vision of the Kingdom of the Shades, the ghosts of girls who have been mistreated:
The vision ends with a pas de deux in which Nikiya forgives him for his weakness. But there will be no consolation for Solor other than opium.
In January 2021, we have 5 versions of La Bayadère in Blu-ray. With only about 88 minutes of dancing, this might be called “Bayadère Lite”—quite a few of Petipas incidental dancing numbers have been cut and the white corps has only 24 women. On a few occasions, you see a wobble from a dancer that would not be allowed at the Bolshoi.
But the story is cleanly and well told by fine dancers who can also act. The sets, costumes, and lighting are beautiful. The Mikhailovsky Theatre Orchestra is excellent with especially striking solos from the violin(s), the cello, and harp. Audio recording and SQ is outstanding. Andy Sommer turns in gorgeous images throughout with sharp resolution even in low light and no motion blur. We ran the numbers on Andy. He gives us fully body shots of the dancers in 96% of all his clips, the best score on this we have seen. His video pace is a solid 10 sections per clip—not as good as we might hope for, but there is no dreaded DVDitis in his file.
There is another remarkable actor in this show: the adoring Saint Petersburg audience. They gleefully applaud constantly the dancers they love so much, and their enthusiasm inspires me also. So I would recommend this as maybe the first choice for younger viewers or others just starting to watch ballet who might not be ready for the full Bolshoi treatment. And I can’t image living in a city that has two fully developed ballet companies! On the dancing aspects of this alone, I might reduce the grade to B, but all the other fine attributes mentioned get me back up to an A.
Here’s a trailer from the BelAir:
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