La Bayadère - Excerpts from “The Kingdom of the Shades“

The second adagio, Variations of the Three Shades, Variation of Nikiya and Grand Coda from Act 3, scene 2 “The Kingdom of the Shades“ from Marius Petipa and Ludwig Minkus’s “La Bayadère“, reconstructed from the Stepanov notation scores of the Sergeyev Collection and introduced by Doug Fullington and performed by Liora Neuville (Nikiya), Seth Orza (Solor), Leta Biasucci (First Shade), Angelica Generosa (Second Shade), Carly Samuelson (Third Shade) and Amanda Clark (corps de ballet). *History Petipa’s most famous exotic ballet, “La Bayadère“ premièred in 1877 and was revived in 1900. “The Kingdom of the Shades“, the ballet’s most famous scene, is set in a heavenly realm that Solor, induced by opium, dreams of meeting his beloved Nikiya again. In the original 1877 production, the scene was set in an illuminated castle in the sky, but in the 1900 revival, the setting was changed to the dark, rocky, starlit mountain tops of the Himalayans. The original number of the corps de ballet of shades was 64, but in the 1900 revival, it was decreased to 48. Choreographically, “The Kingdom of the Shades“ has remained quite similar to what was staged by Petipa, or at least what was notated. In the Soviet Union, espiecally in the 1930s and 40s, the choreography was altered to include bigger lifts, to simplify the choreography for the corps de ballet (cabrioles are heavily featured in the notation scores) and to give more grand ballon choreography to Solor and Nikiya. The traditional choreography for Nikiya that is widely danced today is by Agrippina Vaganova and Natalia Dudinskaya and the choreography for Solor derives from hat of Vakhtang Chabukiani. The first solo violin number, which is today a pas de deux for Solor and Nikiya is more likely to have been a scène dansante, in which the lovers reconcile. As Doug explains, the third solo shade variation was originally much faster than what is danced today, but probably the most interesting passages that has been changed in modern productions is the Variation of Nikiya with the Veil, which sees Nikiya enter the stage holding one end of a long tulle veil, while the other end is attached to a wire in the rafters above the stage. When Nikiya releases the veil, it flies away across the stage and disappears into the rafters, as if it were “supernaturally guided”. Ekaterina Vazem briefly mentions this effect in her memoirs: “I had a great success, in the variation, accompanied by [Leopold] Auer’s violin solo, with the veil which flies upwards at the end.“ Today, this number is now known as the so-called “Scarf Duet”. Rather than Nikiya performing the variation alone with the veil flying away into the rafters, Solor was added, holding the other end of the veil and exiting halfway through, leaving Nikiya to dance the remainder of the variation alone. It was Dudinskaya who introduced the multiple tours en arabesque associated with this variation today and it is her choreography that Doug uses in this lecture because unfortunately, the variation is not notated.