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But the trouble is, we are not an authentic audience. If we were we would perhaps have been there with different motivations than the dance goers of today: ladies confined in corsets, dressed in their best, out to gossip: gentlemen in boiled collars, eyeing up the corps du ballet. We would have been there for a social occasion as much as a cultural one – a chance to show off fancy frocks and flirt. Ideally there should be a Grand Duke or two in the audience, twirling his moustaches and wondering if his special friend would be wearing the jewellery he recently bought her on stage tonight. I’m afraid we were rather less glamorous audience than this suggests. Grand Dukes are now in short supply. Though perhaps we may have paid more attention to what was going on on stage than the audience of 1900 – who can be sure ?

And what would an audience of 1900 made of the dancers on stage ? They would probably have thought of them as unattractively thin: and they might have wondered what Sofia Gumerova’s leg was doing when it shot up in the air in those 6 o’clock extensions.

The biggest potential problem for us the audience is that we can’t unsee all that has happened in ballet, dance and theatre since then. In 1900 the setting of an imaginary India was no doubt extraordinarily exotic and unfamiliar : hence no on might have remarked on the casual mix up between statues of the Buddha and Hindu deities in the sets. The women’s costumes with their bare midriffs must have been shocking and very daring: not so for us when on every tube journey you are confronted by bare midriffs with accompanying tattoos and piercing.

But more worryingly, certain aspects cannot help but raise a giggle in 2003 no matter how sincerely they are done: the fakirs in the opening scene for instance (all by their dancing, quite clearly young men) are burdened with long grey wigs and beards that are straight out of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. There are a series of stuffed animals that likewise provoke mirth: a rather battered stuffed tiger of an improbable bright orange colour, an elephant on wheels and a series of dead parrots on the girls wrists which they do not even try to keep upright through the dance – all bright blue. Norwegian Blues, no doubt.

But his wasn’t the reason that we were there. There are marvellous moments of dance in this Bayadere, but you must be patient and wait for them, and in the meantime, admire the spectacle. The work is given in four acts, with three intervals, about four hours in he theatre in total. (The intervals are lengthy, about half an hour each – the audience of 1900 might have approved). Act 1 probably has the least dance content, introducing the hero Solor, Nikiya the Bayadere he loves, and the jealous High Brahmin who is determined to thwart their relationship.

Solor was Igor Kolb: his dancing role is rather restricted in this production, and the solos that he does have in the Shades act have been added in from a later 1941 production. Given that he had little to do for most of the time apart to stride about looking noble, Kolb fulfilled this quite adequately. When the time came for him to let rip for his solo he did so with enormous energy and force as if he had been restraining his athleticism with difficulty all the rest of the time. It was a reminder of how much more important male dancing has become since 1900: a development I’m glad of, and I wouldn’t be happy to turn the clock back in this regard.

I missed a sense in Kolb of real engagement with his Nikiya, Sofia Gumerova. Although she had gained a little in expressiveness since I saw her as a rather wooden Odette a couple of years ago in a previous appearance at the ROH, she was not deeply engaging or sympathetic as Nikiya. Although Kolb seemed to take exemplary care in partnering her, she still did not seem at ease when dancing with him, particularly in the balances, and seemed to be happier dancing on her own. Not a great deal of chemistry there. Where, I wonder, are the great partnerships in this company these days ?

Gamzatti, the Rajah’s daughter who is Nikiya’s rival for Solor, was played by Viktoria Tereshkina, a member of the corps. This is mainly an acting role, with very little dancing to do until the final act. This was acting in a more formalised 19th century manner, a sense of playing a particular role than giving an individualised interpretation. Technically she was strong enough for the demands of the solos. I still have a yearning to see this done by a an older dancer with a really powerful stage presence to put across a greater sense of drama. But that doesn’t seem to be what this production is about; it moves in its stately pace, in its formal ways to its surprisingly downbeat ending. In the 19th century, breaking off an engagement was a very serious thing: (wasn’t it possible in England to sue for breach of promise if one’s finance changed his mind ?) this production repeats the motif of Solor swearing to be true to Nikiya many times to underscore this point.

The reconstructed Act 4 is however, something of a disappointment after the sublime Act 3, Kingdom of the Shades, where Solor has an extended vision of his murdered Nikiya as one among many ethereal spirits. This is one of the finest sights of the ballet world and its worth going to this production for this alone (someone in my row took this advice rather literally and didn’t turn up for the first two acts). One by on the shades descend the slope, repeating the same steps in an exquisite, hypnotic ritual. The corps did a superlative job and were rightly given a tremendous reception by the audience, who had been perhaps rather quiet until this point.

This has been a long review, and yet there is so much I haven’t had time to include: the various character dances, the drummers in red being an audience favourite. The dancing from the soloists was of high quality throughout with some delightful shades from Irina Golub, Irina Zhelonkina and Tatiana Tkachenko. An excursion into a more slow moving and leisured universe, not to be missed for its rarity value.