A brand new ‘Bayadera’ in Monte Carlo signed by Maillot | Culture | EUROtoday

The Ballets de Monte Carlo have premiered a brand new model of La Bayadère reinterpreted by the French choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot with the title My Bayadère. This time Maillot has gone additional (however nearer to success) by fusing himself with a traditional from the nineteenth century tutorial ballet repertoire, precisely The Bayaderepremiered in 1877 in Saint Petersburg with music commissioned from the Austrian Ludwig Minkus (in French they insist on calling him Lèon) and choreography by Marius Petipa. In that work, Lev Ivanov, solo mime and Petipa’s assistant within the drafting of the white ensembles (the complicated formations of the dance corps pursuing uniqueness and live performance), performed an vital position. Ivanov danced the male soloist roles and was the primary Solor (highly effective rajah who falls in love with Nikiya, the sacred dancer), however the males had been principally porter companions then. In actuality, Solor’s character did not dance spectacularly till the late twentieth century within the arms of Vianonen, Gusev and Chabukiani, however that is one other story. There in 1877 (and Wiley factors out in his biography of Ivanov) his perform went past the scene and controlled many choral particulars, during which Lev, who had already turned 44, was the very best.

The cameos and quotations from the unique within the Maillot model are studied to the philological stage and dosed in order that the truffle enjoys steadiness. This virtually neo-archaeological philology of educational ballet, of the choreutical supplies remaining from a clearly superb previous, presents extra instruments to the brand new creation itself. Maillot’s intention is obvious to not separate himself from the traditional strategy of ballet and its expressive assets, the place he intersects his personal gestures, a seek for causal humor, and above all, that the interrelation between the characters is minimally credible. There is an autobiographical tract drawn with elegant distance, nothing tearful and ample in theatrical assets primarily based on a hypothetical marriage of custom with innovation, the as soon as dazzling mechanisms of “grand ceremonial ballet“with the current technological apogee. And that’s where the elephant comes into the fray, which discreetly, in Maillot’s work, passes by without much prominence. Let’s do justice to the pachyderm.

We must say that the prop elephant in ballets is a myth with its own history, dozens of occasional anecdotes beyond bayadera (Nureyev brought it back with great fanfare in Paris). The first elephant used in St. Petersburg was in the ballet King Candaule (Petipa / Pugni, 1868) and it cost a fortune, it was sent to be manufactured in Paris with its complex mechanisms that included the movements of the trunk, opening and closing the eyes and beating the large ears, lowering and raising the head to the sound of the horns, this is how it remained in the chronicles. Such a sensation caused his arrival in the Venice of the North that the enormous pupil was baptized as Pierre. That artifact had to be made profitable, and so Petipa, inspired by the illustrations of the traveler Prince Soltikoff, as soon as some exotic plot gave rise, looked for a place for the elephant parade (there are fanfares composed expressly for those scenes), and that is why it appears in bayadera in 1877 and triumphed again in Kalkabrino in 1891. And Pierre was lent to those of the opera, since it is known that he appeared on the great Petersburg stage in several productions of Aida.

Curling the loop, Maillot extends the cameo to the complete inclusion of the Danza Infernal in the recent version by Alexei Ratmanski, quite attentive, especially in character and style, to the old original that, very busy, is preserved as if from the hands of Petipa. It is an exotic, earthly and anticlimactic dance that precedes the act of shadows. A tremendous bustle that will lead to the enchanted stillness of the apparitions of jeweled and spectral white statues. While in the Danza Infernal The tam-tam is struck and the floor is furiously struck, then the evanescent tips of the bayaderas, gone or dead, pass by lightly accompanied by the famous theme that gives rise to the greatest moment of this work. Maillot’s second act is better than the first, where he resorts to the game of theater within the theater (in this case, the ballet within the ballet) and where the subtle, useful and precious influences of his main teacher, John Neumeier, whose canonical example of this resource is in his Nutcracker.

The triumph at the Grimaldi Forum was huge with the entire audience standing, Princess Carolina included; She is the main cheerleader and supporter of the group. The house’s philharmonic orchestra has us accustomed to a powerful and intonated sound, with an almost aristocratic impasto that ennobles the less brilliant parts of this score, where it abounds in the use of mere and flat accompaniment, whether it be an adagio, whether it be a waltz or a wild allegro. Maillot, in the first act, uses sound bases from old pantomimes to create standout choreography, something that works sometimes.

The theater must be deconstructed, cut into pieces, and then with new spirit, put it together and reconstitute it from its figuratively magical essence. It is not reconstruction, they are different things; Seen this way, let’s rely on language to try to describe what Maillot exactly does. A ballet within a ballet requires deep awareness of the medium and the opportunity to break down and articulate the pieces, with curious details. For example, there is no small basket with flowers where Gamza (formerly in the original Gamzatti) has hidden a poisonous asp to kill his rival, Niki (formerly Nikiya), but rather, in another twist, the famous variation of the basket is recreated with Solo’s (formerly Solor) turban, which has the same shape and proportions. Why create shortcuts for the names of the roles? Maillot and his co-screenwriter Geoffroy Staquet justify it.

Almost all ballets, and like so many operas too, although they had overwhelming success in their day, were later forgotten, and in some rare cases, predestined to survive only because of some brilliant fragment. This is what happened with bayadera and his act The kingdom of shadowscontinued to be performed. Let’s think hypothetically that My Bayadèrewithin years or decades, it will stop being done. Its second act could and should remain a concert piece for its own values. It is one of Maillot’s best, within a set that vividly and evidently evokes a precise stage of Frank Stella’s linear and optical paintings and where it is indirectly cited in the magical canon of the entrance to the bayaderes, in this case, a mixed population that is also already somewhere else, in another life, in another dream. All the dancers lived up to expectations, with a virtuoso dance, sometimes risky and other times as intense as it was sensual.

We hardly saw it, but the Golden Idol (or Golden Slave) was there, elusive. The Golden Idol is a secondary character invented in the middle of the 20th century and inserted into The Bayadereas a cameo of occasion, a pearl of effect and exhibition: The dance of the votive statue! Making a sculpture dance as part of the set was already in the plot imagination and the collective tradition of ballet. The last to do so before Zubkovski was Mijail Fokin on the same Mariinsky stage in Eros (1915), where an adult white marble Cupid descends from his pedestal and dances (as in Sylvia of Delibes). The Golden or Bronze Idol was not part of theBayadereoriginal, this must be emphasized. It was first performed in 1948 by its choreographer Nikolai Zubkovsky, but for Maillot, everything fits in his conjurer’s basket.