Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, a favored meeting place, enjoys bringing great ballet classics with a facelift. Artistic director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui deliberately seeks out choreographers who create a new, fresh version of the classics. He invited the promising Argentinian choreographer Daniel Proietto to create an update of La Bayadère by Ludwig Minkus, specially for Ballet Vlaanderen's 50th anniversary.
Origin and new context
La Bayadère (The Temple Dancer) is one of the showpieces of the classical ballet repertoire and was first performed by the Imperial Ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre in Saint Petersburg in a choreography by Marius Pepita on February 4, 1877. The ballet combined the exotic setting of 19th-century India with the astonishing virtuosity of Russian ballet technique. The original story tells of the forbidden love between a temple dancer and the warrior Solor.
Choreographer Proietto relocates the story to the 21st century and contemporary India, highlighting the Western neocolonial gaze on the East. Structural factors such as social and cultural norms. The bayadères still exist in India but have lost all social status. The bayadère in RASA is a gender-fluid prostitute who encounters the boundaries of a misogynistic world. The ballet thus receives a completely new coloration. It highlights phenomena such as gender, community, isolation, and power relations. Which results in a complete contrast with the original work. Between past and present there is an enormous gap. You cannot erase the social order of the 19th century. The approach of calling this production a 'contestation' is far-fetched.
In his choreography, Proietto combines techniques from classical ballet with elements from traditional Indian dances and contemporary movements.
Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson wrote a completely new score with different types of music and influences from all corners of the world. It is performed live by the Casco Phil Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Haemhouts. A good match: the dramaturgical analysis nourished the musical interpretation and vice versa. A surprising appearance is the apostle of folk song Guido Belacanto who appears as a tuk-tuk driver. With his long gray locks, he is the embodiment of a wise man who, through his life experience, has gained insight into the winding paths of love. The monumental staircase spanning three different heights with small plateaus in between offers plenty of play and dance possibilities. The costumes by fashion designer Tamai Hirokawa are remarkable.
Performance
Giving a ballet content, tension and relaxation, resistance and compliance, cultural backgrounds in a connected vision is an extraordinarily difficult task. Daniel Proietto wants to do it too well. As far as performing arts are concerned, we live in an age of hybridization, mixed forms, and crossovers, and there is nothing wrong with that at all, it is usually enriching, but the audience comes to watch a ballet mainly to enjoy dance.
Part one
This young choreographer pulls out all the stops and goes into overdrive. It is a worn-out cliché, but less is more. The story is drawn out endlessly and splintered into anecdotes and a jumble of styles to give the whole some lightness. The robot-like moving nurses, the raging Queen Victoria and Empress of India (Zoë Ashe-Browne) being wheeled around in a wheelchair, the constantly ranting Faker in a rhetorical flood (Matt Foley). It becomes a bit of a pastiche. The action and storyline shoots from here to there like a ball in a pinball machine. Yet there are some beautiful scenes, such as the duet between the street boy Nicky who struggles with his gender identity (Daniel Domenech) and Solor danced by the charismatic Cuban guest dancer Osiel Gouneo in an intimate, intense interaction. It is moving to see the little street urchin trying to seek education and be recognized in society. There is also a skillful duet between Solor and Gamzatti (Nicha Rodboom), who are forced to marry. Solor reacts coldly and dismissively, Gamzatti submissively. Only at the end of part one does real dancing happen in an explosion of zest for life and the whole takes on a cabaret-like character.
Part two
Choreographer Proietto cannot completely escape the original work. The 'Kingdom of Shadows' receives a particularly intriguing and hallucinatory interpretation from him. Solor walks lost among the white shadows, a technical and aesthetic achievement. It appears metaphysical. The figures move lost in the borderland where shadows move like waves in a haunting image storm. The dead and the living brush past each other in their coming and going, and present and past touch and overlap each other.
Part three
In this final scene he pulls out all the stops again with a water scene in which star dancer Osiel Gouneo shines. Here too, an abundance of images: a prancing elephant, bulls, monkeys, dancers with wings, strongly stylized Indian dance, exuberant Bollywood dancers in the water scene, everyone gets a place on the stage in an eclectic mix. Solor is alone in the crowd. Gradually the stage empties. What remains are a few beggars among whom Solor wanders and the audience is led back to the opening images. The circle is complete.
The audience no longer sees a 'ballet' but a gesamtkunstwerk that has something to say and wants to appeal to and move people on a spiritual, intellectual and emotional level. However, choreographer Proietto doesn't quite succeed. The whole thing slips through your fingers like water, lacking tension and sparkle. The audience is left wanting, which was noticeable in the polite but not directly enthusiastic applause. This young choreographer undoubtedly has talent but is still finding himself and wants to show off too much. The dancers of Ballet Vlaanderen deserve nothing but praise.
- WHAT: RASA (based on La Bayadère)
- WHO: Ballet Vlaanderen,
- CHOREOGRAPHY: Daniel Proietto
- COSTUMES: fashion designer Tamai Hirokawa
- MUSIC: Mikael Karlsson (composer), Casco Phil Orkest conducted by Benjamin Haemhouts
- PHOTOS: © Filip Van Roe
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