AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE
La bayadere represents the most recognizably classical side of ABT’s repertory. It’s an excerpt from Marius Petipa’s 1877 La bayadere, the “Kingdom of the Shades” scene from act two, and it epitomizes classical concerns with elegance, form, line, phrasing, and musicality. Yes, of course, the scene is wrenched from its narrative context, but the drama is not central to the dancing: this sort of classicism is far more concerned with dance than with drama.
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The “Kingdom of the Shades” scene, in which the warrior Solor is reunited in a dream with his lover Nikiya, provided Petipa with the perfect pretext for creating lovely, lyrical movement for the two lovers, three ballerinas, and a large corps de ballet. In the opening of this 1974 production (staged by Natalia Makarova, with set, costumes, and lighting by PierLuigi Samaritani, Theoni V. Aldredge, and Toshiro Ogawa respectively), the corps enters from between the crests of two great waves painted in the style of 19th-century Japanese prints.
The company’s engagement also featured the Chicago premiere of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s new production of Swan Lake, the ballet originally choreographed by Petipa and Lev Ivanov in 1895. That this Swan Lake succeeds so well owes at least as much to Baryshnikov’s altered score, Jennifer Tipton’s brilliant, subtly novel lighting design, and Samaritani’s scenery and costumes as to the beauty of the original. This is a Renaissance court, more evocative than specific. (The plastic swans and the cartoonish shadow swan dying may be a bit much, however.)
Neither Prodigal Son, Swan Lake, nor La bayadere is really about exciting ensemble choreography; even Gaite parisienne (now looking a trifle jaded) is little more than a series of star turns. ABT’s new pieces, Clark Tippet’s Rigaudon and Mark Morris’s Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes (both receiving their Chicago premieres this season), show the company to signal advantage.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Martha Swope.
