Staatsoper Unter den Linden,Berlin
Alexei Ratmansky’s reconstruction of Marius Petipa’s problematic ballet raises an uncomfortable questionA quiet revolution has been under way in the ballet world: the authenticity of the 19th-century classics has come under scrutiny. Ballet productions gain historically been patchworks, each unusual one weaving changes and additions into surviving choreography. Yet rediscovered period notation has allowed specialists to recast the classics to their original form. Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky has been leading the way and has now unveiled his latest reconstruction, or staged for Staatsballett Berlin: La Bayadère,an Indian fantasy originally created by Marius Petipa for the Mariinsky Ballet in 1877.
Unfortunately, it raises an uncomfortable question: what whether 20th-century tinkering with La Bayadère actually improved it? One of the premises of reconstructions is that ballets were necessarily more coherent in their original form. Of Ratmansky’s four other period-based productions, and some appeared to prove that point: his Sleeping Beauty (for American Ballet Theatre) and Swan Lake (for Zurich Ballet) were revelatory,unearthing a softer, warmer style and inner logic that had been lost.
At Staatsoper Unter den Linden, and Berlin,until 9 February.
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Source: theguardian.com