The Boca Ballet Theatre Performs ‘La Bayadere’

The Boca Ballet Theatre, which celebrates its twenty year anniversary this year, created a unique fusion of young ballet students from their own company and talented dancers from some of the world’s most renowned ballets for its production of La Bayadere. The highly-stylized production, which took place at Olympic Heights High School rather than on the Florida Atlantic University campus because of the use of pyrotechnics in the show, featured Gillian Murphy, a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre as “Nikiya”; Jose Manuel Carreno, a veteran with nearly thirty years of experience and principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre as “Solor”; Sarah Smith, a corps de ballet dancer with American Ballet Theatre who started at eleven-years-old with the Boca Ballet Theatre as “Gamzatti”; and Daniel Ulbricht, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet as “The Golden Idol”.

Set in the royal India of antiquity, La Bayadere is the romantic tragedy styled by Marius Petipa that tells the story of the beautiful bayadere (temple dancer), Nikiya, who promises her eternal fidelity to Solor, a great warrior, while turning away the rapacious love of her temple’s High Brahmin.

— Photography and text by Brandon Kruse/The Palm Beach Post

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After Solor is made to marry Gamzatti, the seductive daughter of the Radjah Dugumanta, the High Brahmin, seeking to eradicate Solor, tells the Radjah about Solor’s love for Nikiya. Rather than destroying Solor as the High Brahmin had intended, the Radjah and his daughter Gamzatti both formulate a plan to have Nikiya killed at the soon-to-be married couple’s betrothal celebration.

At the gathering, Nikiya, who is forced to dance, performs a somber lament before being bit by a poisonous snake placed in a basket of flowers by a jealous Gamzatti. Although offered an antidote by the amatory High Brahmin, the beautiful bayadere chooses death over a life without her true love.

In an opium-induced hallucination, the depressed Solor briefly reunites with the spirit of his deceased Nikiya, but is awakened to find preparations underway for his marriage to Gamzatti. At their wedding, the spirit of the bayadere haunts Solor as he dances with Gamzatti, but the determined Solor goes forward with the ceremony. At the moment the couple’s hands unite, the gods, angered over Nikiya’s death, destroy the temple and everyone inside. In death, Solor’s spirit is finally reunited in the final scene with the spirit of his lost love.

Source: http://clikhear.palmbeachpost.com