ABT - La Bayadere June 2008 Options

[Haglund's]

I caught the opening of La Bayadere last night. I enjoyed Veronika Part as Nikiya immensely for the luxuriant quality of her movement and her downright astonishing beauty. At times, the tempo for her dancing was so slow that her movement appeared sluggish, especially during the Scene 3 dance in front of Solor and Gamzatti. From a technical standpoint, her performance was serviceable with an especially brilliant supported pirouette finishing attitude during the Act II PdD. I thought - why can’t she lay it on us like that more often? Other unsupported pirouettes in Act II were less successful.

Gomes’ Solor was fantastic in every possible way, as was Michele Wiles as Gamzatti. Michele’s Italian fouettes were brilliant, particularly with the way she whipped her head from back to front with a glance that said everything that needed to be said about Gamzatti’s sense of entitlement. Even though her Act III solo was absolutely beautiful, as soon as I heard the music, I realized once again how much I’d missed seeing Abrera’s dancing this season as this has become a role that I now identify with her unique talents. My only disappointment was the Nikiya/Gamzatti cat fight. There wasn’t much chase and tumble to it last night.

I thought the corps was superb last night. As the first dancers were descending the ramp, some idiot photographer was standing in the wings in front of the ramp snapping flash pictures of the parade. The flashes were so obvious that I thought they changed the lighting design of the scene to add some kind of electrical storm. Hello? Whoever you are, Mr./Ms. Photographer, you really interfered with the enjoyment of the scene.

The shades were Lane, Kajiya and Thomas (replacing Riccetto). Beautiful faces, no inappropriate gleaming grills, coordinated dancing. Thomas’ variation (the slow single pirouette with the developpe) was really lovely. Her knees are quite hyperextended and look gorgeous at 120 degrees, but much above that, the leg begins to look like it’s going to curve back over her head. Lane again went for all triple pirouettes – making most of them quite cleanly. I have to respect her for what now seems to be her personal standard to make herself do them wherever the music allows. She’s not going to be successful 100% of the time, but no one is – not even Murphy or Wiles.

Does anybody know what the significance is, if any, to the dim wick in the candle dance? For years, I’ve noticed that one of the candles always has a dim wick. Last night I noticed two dim wicks.