I am so excited to be working on La Bayadère with stager Florence Clerc. This is the first time in my professional career that I have had the opportunity to be a part of this ballet, though I am familiar with the it from working on parts in school. To brush up on my knowledge of the ballet, I have been watching the DVD of the Paris Opera Ballet, whose version is similar to ours. This ballet is epic! Set in India, it is the story of a temple dancer named Nikiya and her love Solor who marries the princess Gamzatti who murders Nikiya out of jealousy- and it ends with Solor dreaming of the ghost of Nikiya in the Kingdom of the Shades. It is such a grand, dramatic ballet filled with so much beautiful and difficult dancing- it is going to be a lot of hard work, but so rewarding. This week we started learning the Kingdom of the Shades; twenty-four corps girls in white tutus doing thirty-eight arabesques down a ramp and around the stage, followed by an adagio section. It is really hard. We started running through the whole entrance without stopping at the end of the week, and, wow, we are going to be so strong by the time we get on stage, but for right now, hello leg cramps!
Ballet: La Bayadère
Choreographer: Stanton Welch
Dancer: Elise Judson
Photograph: Amitava Sarkar
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment