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It was another 28 years before the whole body arrived when the Royal Ballet staged Makarova’s full- length three-act production. Subsequent Kirov visits to these shores, such as the performance at the Lowry earlier this year, have brought their Soviet staging of La Bayadère, produced in 1941.

Last night, the Royal Opera House at last got to see the Imperial Russian production in all its full four Act, seven scene (and apotheosis) glory. The music, choreography, sets and costumes have been carefully restored, through a painstaking study of the rich array of original material in Theatre Museum archives in Russia and around the world, so that the ballet could be metaphorically handed back to Petipa, by recreating the version of his own revival in 1900 - the original production had ceased to be performed after just six years, in 1885.

The significance of this is immense. La Bayadère represents a pivotal point in balletic development, standing exactly between the Romantic and Classical eras and here was the first opportunity for a British audience to see it in almost the way its creators intended. The queue for tickets should have stretched to Charing Cross!

Before attempting to judge how the Kirov performed on this momentous night, it is worth sparing a thought for the players. Most of the dancers on stage last night had performed in two back-to-back triple bills on the previous day and then in a mammoth, 5-hour dress rehearsal, which ended only two hours before the curtain came up. If you think about it, it defies belief. Its like asking Paula Ratcliffe to run a marathon hours before competing in the Olympic Final! But then, I suppose, it is the way ballet has always been!  

La Bayadère is a ballet framed within an extravagant story and this reconstructed production enriches the narrative further, requiring outstanding mimetic qualities from all the performers. Vladimir Ponomarev, as the lustful, evil High Brahmin was, in particular, a master story-teller through mime. There have been criticisms that the extended slow-paced narrative of the opening two acts means that there is hardly any dancing of note. This is true but there is a logical cohesion to the way that the story develops in these important opening scenes and, as for dancing, Daria Pavlenko’s early appearance on the window ledge, playing her Veena (a type of Indian mandolin) showed how a great ballerina can dance just by moving an arm!

Pavlenko, still only a soloist in the Kirov, has an amazing face. It seems to be from another age – bold, beautiful and extraordinarily expressive. She portrayed Nikiya, the tragic temple dancer, with a lyrical and dramatic intensity that must have echoed the great performances of Vazem and Kchessinska (the Nikiyas of 1877 and 1900). It is hard to identify a single element of her performance for special note but, for me, the extraordinary sequence of balances as she unfolded her leg through turns poised on point, developed through an adagio foutté into the arabesque, repeating the movements several times over, without the merest hint of a wobble, was worthy of the ticket price alone.

As the object of her love, Solor, Andrian Fadeyev, was a young warrior of heroic proportion. Torn between noble duty and true love, his descent into an opium-fuelled reunion with the ghost of his Bayadère was painfully convincing. He danced strongly with impressive virtuosity, particularly in the expansive single movements although it was possible to detect the pain of tired limbs in the most exhausting sequences, particularly in the chain of double assembles en tournant.

Elvira Tarasova portrayed the Rajah’s daughter, Gamzatti, as Bette Davis might have played her on film. Her interpretation was that of a cold, calculating ‘rich bitch’. A woman that you really wouldn’t want to cross and for a lowly dancer to steal her man, well…..! Her dancing highlight was in the whipped fouttés of the last Act, which she performed with a grim determination. After the marathon, they must have hurt!

Kirov's La Bayadere
© John Ross

There was some absolutely gorgeous dancing from the set groups. Irina Golub stood out in the Bayadères dance from Act II, Scene II and again in the Shades trio with Irina Zhelonkina and the divine Tatiana Tkachenko. Finally, the Pas d’action in the final Act with Serebryakova, Selina, Sukhorukova and Tkachenko was absolutely perfect.

Young dancers of various English ballet schools performed the dance of the Lotus blossoms in Act IV and they managed to overcome nerves with charm and vivacity to earn some very well deserved applause.

The only problem with the recreation of the 1900 version was that some of the props were laughably naive: the dead tiger, carried on set twice, looked so much like a cuddly toy that the audience couldn’t resist laughing. The parrots perched on the Bayadères arms in the dancing at the beginning of Act II, scene II, were hanging off at such odd angles that they reminded me of a certain Monty Python sketch! And as for the paper-mache Elephant! But that’s the acceptable price of recreating history!

The true star of Bayadère is, and always has been, the Kingdom of the Shades. It is the best six minutes of white ballet spectacle. There is an hypnotic almost mantra-like effect of the dead bayadères (the “shades”), identically dressed and appearing one by one, criss-crossing the stage, stepping into arabesques allongées before being drawn back into the underworld in a deep back bend, with arms en couronne and their working leg en tendu, and then stepping forward into the next arabesque, over and over again.

The sequence lasts for 39 arabesques, or approximately three minutes, before all the shades are on the main stage, assembled in 8 lines of 4 dancers (the original had 48 shades). The first half of the Shades’ entrance was performed almost perfectly, without a hint of a wobble, but with some spacing problems between shades ever so slightly spoiling the overall effect of the single thread drawing the Shades out of the underworld in perfect harmony. At the end of the sequence, the shades split into two groups of 14 facing off-stage right and left in perfect point-tendu formation.

No matter how many times this six minutes is seen it is always magic. There is nothing very fanciful or elaborate about the Kingdom of the Shades. It is simple choreography translated into an extravagant scale. The great things in life are always the simple ideas.

It was quite wonderful to see a major part of ballet history recreated in the 21st Centuy and the additional narrative adds richness to the story. Any serious balletomane should try to get a ticket. But, having seen it, I am now looking forward to the return of Natalia Makarova’s RB version in the Autumn.

When all is said and done, I must prefer the dance of the bronze idol to an Elephant on wheels and a host of dead parrots!