Paris Opera Ballet: La Bayadère

Ballet in three acts (1992) It was on the stage of the Palais Garnier that Rudolf Nureyev first revealed himself to Western audiences in 1961 as a dancer, and on this same stage that he greeted the public for the last time in 1992 as a choreographer, with ‘La Bayadère’. Adapted from Petipa's original, the work reflects Nureyev’s taste for flamboyance. In an imaginary India, where an elephant parades before the rajah’s palace and a golden idol performs a fan dance, a thwarted love unfolds between the warrior Solor (Hugo Marchand) and the bayadère Nikiya (Dorothée Gilbert), a temple dancer. A jewel in the crown of the Paris Opera’s repertoire, La Bayadère dazzles with virtuoso variations, spectacular ensembles and the purity of its “Kingdom of the Shades” scene, during which 32 dancers in white tutus slowly trace their arabesques with a poetry bordering on magic.