La Bayadère opens with a sacred flame and ends with an earthquake. In between, Marius Petipa’s ballet of 1877 gives us an India of the imagination, an India that never was. It is a place of tigers and tutus, scimitars and slippers. Cultural appropriation, you say? But who could object when it’s all so Pondicherry pretty: a durbar dream of silk harem pants, beaded bracelets, sun-goddess gowns, swags of hibiscus, palanquins, hookah pipes, snakes, divans and dances of the seven tie-dyed veils. The temple backdrops are gorgeous and preposterous. I’m the king of the swingers, oh…
Besides you can hardly culturally appropriate when the company of the Royal Ballet is the grandest of grand bazaars. On the night I saw La Bayadère, Nikiya, the eponymous temple dancer, was danced by Akane Takada (born in Tokyo), her rival Gamzatti, the Raja’s scheming daughter, by Yasmine Naghdi (born in London to a Belgian mother and Iranian father) and Solor the warrior who betrays Nikiya’s love for Gamzatti’s by Steven McRae (Sydney).
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