Published: June 25, 2008
American Ballet Theater’s production of “La Bayadère,” choreographed by Natalia Makarova, can leave you feeling as if you’ve stumbled, perhaps after a few drinks, onto a dusty old movie set. “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” comes to mind, though no one in the ballet, alas, has his still-beating heart pulled from his chest.
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Erin Baiano for The New York Times
This American Ballet Theater production of La Bayadère features Veronika Part, left, and Marcelo Gomes at the Metropolitan Opera House.
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Times Topics: American Ballet Theater
The ballet’s perfume of musty cinematic romance has its good elements, like Pier Luigi Samaritani’s fantastically fake sets depicting lush vegetation, gilded palaces and sinister temples, and its bad — Orientalism is alive and well in this silly, exoticized vision of earthly intrigues and eternal love.
On Monday it fell to Marcelo Gomes, as the warrior Solor, and Veronika Part, as the temple dancer Nikiya, to deliver the love. The machinations came via Michelle Wiles, as the rajah’s daughter, Gamzatti, plotting to thwart the union and snare Solor for herself. Ms. Wiles is a powerhouse, but not well suited to this role: she creates meaning through speed and technical ability, not acting, and wickedness is not her forte.
Offstage there were also intrigues. This has been a strange season for Ms. Part, a polarizing soloist who left the Kirov Ballet to join Ballet Theater in 2002. Chat rooms have been abuzz since a March article on Ballet.co.uk, a British Web site, reported that she had given notice. But according to a Ballet Theater spokesperson, she is signed on for next year. Depending on whom you ask, her staying is news for rejoicing or eye-rolling. Ballet is full of camps, but the divide between those who find Ms. Part divine and ones who find her disastrous is particularly marked.
In truth, she is a bit of both, now flubbing point work in astonishing fashion (her turn as Aurora in “The Sleeping Beauty” premiere last season was especially nerve-racking to behold, and she was not given the role this year), now projecting a plush, old-fashioned grandeur. Nikiya is a good role for her, allowing her to capitalize on her long, sinuous extensions and sensual allure without demanding too many punishing technical feats.
And any dancer would feel safe in the arms of Mr. Gomes, a sure and generous partner who manages the rare trick of standing out while letting his ballerinas shine. Not many men can get away with turbans and lilac-colored tights (Theoni V. Aldredge designed the costumes) or delirious opium dreams, but he manages with an aplomb containing a delicious hint of camp. After dramatically arching his back while kneeling at the end of one passage of space-eating leaps and turns, Mr. Gomes presented to his cheering public an equally arch face. He is a delight.
Sarawanee Tanatanit was terrifically spooky as Gamzatti’s servant, and Craig Salstein, resplendent in a ridiculous wig and loincloth, was an amusingly wild head fakir. Yet the heart of “La Bayadère” lies not in any individual performer but in the corps de ballet, which appears to Solor in an opium-fueled haze as an endless, winding line of ethereal Shades in white tutus and gauzy veils. Tortured by the death of Nikiya (Gamzatti gets her with the old serpent-in-a-flower-basket trick), Solor seeks refuge in oblivion. This being ballet, his oblivion takes the form of classical transcendence, with the slow, unison unfurling of arabesques meant to conjure a world beyond time.
Of course, the women offering this vision are very young, and it’s difficult to imagine any of them having spent much time pondering immortality or its obverse. The juxtaposition between their reality as ambitious but vulnerable workhorses in an elite company and the hoped-for projection of effortless purity has a terrible beauty to it, one that exists, like the Kingdom of the Shades, outside the ballet itself. The eye travels again and again to the multiplied image of fragile supporting legs, shaking with the tremendous effort of maintaining that line. Night after night they hold it. The cost is glorious, and high.
American Ballet Theater performs through July 12 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 362-6000.
American Ballet Theater’s production of “La Bayadère,” choreographed by Natalia Makarova, can leave you feeling as if you’ve stumbled, perhaps after a few drinks, onto a dusty old movie set. “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” comes to mind, though no one in the ballet, alas, has his still-beating heart pulled from his chest.
Skip to next paragraph
Erin Baiano for The New York Times
This American Ballet Theater production of La Bayadère features Veronika Part, left, and Marcelo Gomes at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Related
Times Topics: American Ballet TheaterThe ballet’s perfume of musty cinematic romance has its good elements, like Pier Luigi Samaritani’s fantastically fake sets depicting lush vegetation, gilded palaces and sinister temples, and its bad — Orientalism is alive and well in this silly, exoticized vision of earthly intrigues and eternal love.
On Monday it fell to Marcelo Gomes, as the warrior Solor, and Veronika Part, as the temple dancer Nikiya, to deliver the love. The machinations came via Michelle Wiles, as the rajah’s daughter, Gamzatti, plotting to thwart the union and snare Solor for herself. Ms. Wiles is a powerhouse, but not well suited to this role: she creates meaning through speed and technical ability, not acting, and wickedness is not her forte.
Offstage there were also intrigues. This has been a strange season for Ms. Part, a polarizing soloist who left the Kirov Ballet to join Ballet Theater in 2002. Chat rooms have been abuzz since a March article on Ballet.co.uk, a British Web site, reported that she had given notice. But according to a Ballet Theater spokesperson, she is signed on for next year. Depending on whom you ask, her staying is news for rejoicing or eye-rolling. Ballet is full of camps, but the divide between those who find Ms. Part divine and ones who find her disastrous is particularly marked.
In truth, she is a bit of both, now flubbing point work in astonishing fashion (her turn as Aurora in “The Sleeping Beauty” premiere last season was especially nerve-racking to behold, and she was not given the role this year), now projecting a plush, old-fashioned grandeur. Nikiya is a good role for her, allowing her to capitalize on her long, sinuous extensions and sensual allure without demanding too many punishing technical feats.
And any dancer would feel safe in the arms of Mr. Gomes, a sure and generous partner who manages the rare trick of standing out while letting his ballerinas shine. Not many men can get away with turbans and lilac-colored tights (Theoni V. Aldredge designed the costumes) or delirious opium dreams, but he manages with an aplomb containing a delicious hint of camp. After dramatically arching his back while kneeling at the end of one passage of space-eating leaps and turns, Mr. Gomes presented to his cheering public an equally arch face. He is a delight.
Sarawanee Tanatanit was terrifically spooky as Gamzatti’s servant, and Craig Salstein, resplendent in a ridiculous wig and loincloth, was an amusingly wild head fakir. Yet the heart of “La Bayadère” lies not in any individual performer but in the corps de ballet, which appears to Solor in an opium-fueled haze as an endless, winding line of ethereal Shades in white tutus and gauzy veils. Tortured by the death of Nikiya (Gamzatti gets her with the old serpent-in-a-flower-basket trick), Solor seeks refuge in oblivion. This being ballet, his oblivion takes the form of classical transcendence, with the slow, unison unfurling of arabesques meant to conjure a world beyond time.
Of course, the women offering this vision are very young, and it’s difficult to imagine any of them having spent much time pondering immortality or its obverse. The juxtaposition between their reality as ambitious but vulnerable workhorses in an elite company and the hoped-for projection of effortless purity has a terrible beauty to it, one that exists, like the Kingdom of the Shades, outside the ballet itself. The eye travels again and again to the multiplied image of fragile supporting legs, shaking with the tremendous effort of maintaining that line. Night after night they hold it. The cost is glorious, and high.
American Ballet Theater performs through July 12 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 362-6000.
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