BALLET REVIEW : Glorious Hokum by the Kirov

The Kirov Ballet--limping through a badly attended, painfully mismanaged week of scruffy performances at the Shrine Auditorium--turned on Thursday to a reasonable facsimile of Marius Petipa’s “La Bayadere.”

The extravaganza was staged much as it had been at the St. Petersburg premiere in 1877. Repeat: 1877.

They simply don’t make ballets like this anymore. They wouldn’t dare.

America knows “La Bayadere” primarily for the isolated Kingdom of the Shades scene, belatedly introduced to the West by the Kirov in 1961. An ethereal symphony of arabesques leading to a spectacular pas de deux, it left the deceptive impression that Petipa had created a exercise in classical purity exalting the symbolic figure of the ballerina in a white tutu.

In 1980, however, a Kirov refugee named Natalia Makarova produced her own version of the full-length “Bayadere” for American Ballet Theatre--a version even more complete than the one she used to dance in Leningrad. Suddenly, our audiences realized that the rest of the piece is not so pristine. It is, in fact, a massive exercise in exotic kitsch.

This, dear children, is a ballet about a sweet temple dancer--call her a bayadere--in distant India who falls in love with a callous if not stupid high-jumping warrior who becomes the love object of a wicked rajah’s vengeful daughter who happens to be deft at fouettes. The shades episode, we discover, is just a pipe dream: the guilt-ridden hero’s opium-pipe dream, to be precise.

Before the plot unwinds and the walls come tumbling down (in a final scene that the Russians have omitted for at least half a century), the triangular convolutions are decorated with cute hootchy-kootch dances, nifty muscle-flexing competitions for numerous beefcake champions, some slinky fake-fakir maneuvers, bits of priestly voodoo and a virtuosic showpiece for a flying bronze statue accompanied by a gang of mortal friends.

That’s not all, folks. There are guest appearances by a prop elephant (quasi-live), and a stuffed tiger (quasi-dead), both adorable. A team of thirsty dervishes enlivens the first act, and a flock of toy parrots provides wrist embellishment for some of the hippety-hop girls. All this theatrical gimmickry surrounds a gut-wrenching death scene in which the virginal bayadere gets her pretty chest bitten by a snake hidden by her nasty rival in a basket of flowers.

Nonstop fun.

The Kirov version, which cannot have changed much over the last 115 years, seems to take the whole thing very seriously. Ultimately, that is the only way to take it.

This “Bayadere” represents a sacred--well, at least semi-sacred--part of a historic legacy. It is good to see it, at long last, in America.

The five original set designs--quaintly picturesque canvases attributed to four different artists--are still in use, and some of the ill-hung vistas don’t look as if they have been touched by a paintbrush in decades. Evgeny Ponomaryov’s wrong-period costumes, which reveal a lot of bare ballerina midriff and favor skimpy brassieres strategically tipped with jewels, obviously belong to a later epoch. Perhaps they evolved from the Vaganova revival of 1932.

As usual, the joke masquerading as a program at the Shrine provides few clues and inadequate credits. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to trace the current staging scheme to an edition that emerged in Leningrad nine years later. This presumably ultimate “Bayadere”--overseen by Vladimir Ponomaryov (no relation either to the costume designer or the gentleman of the same name who impersonated the High Brahmin on this occasion)--introduced some flashy choreographic additions by Vakhtang Chabukiani, most of which benefit the hookah-prone hero.

The composite is a stylistic hodgepodge that hops shamelessly from caractere ritual to florid mime to romantic indulgence to show-biz diversion. The score, which bubbles and bumbles along with dauntless cheer no matter how heart-rending the action, probably contains contributions by Alexandre Luigini as well as the justly maligned Ludwig Minkus.

In the cold light of 1992, “La Bayadere” can only be regarded as hokum. No matter. It is glorious hokum, and the beleaguered Kirov knows what to do with it.

In the title role, Altynai Assylmuratova easily justified her claim to prima-ballerina status, exerting winsome charm that turned to lyric innocence that turned to exotic allure that ultimately gave way to sublime serenity. This was a perfectly gauged performance--technically dazzling, emotionally compelling, stylistically authoritative. Assylmuratova defied the viewer not to regard little Nikiya as the ultimate tragic victim.

Konstantin Zaklinsky, her handsome Solor (and offstage husband), once again proved himself a sympathetic actor, a selfless partner, a consummate professional and a rather limited dancer when it comes to crucial bravura climaxes. Back in 1877, Petipa gave the mime portion of the role to one artist and the demanding pas de deux to another. Inadvertently, Zaklinsky suggested that this time-dishonored custom might be worth reviving once in a while.

Olga Chenchikova--whose cool, regal grandeur must make her the Russian counterpart of Cynthia Gregory--brought noble disdain, dramatic restraint and glamorous amplitude to the duties of the rajah’s Amneris-like daughter.

Also notable in the large cast (an interesting typographical error in the program said “Drama is Personae”) were Evgeny Neff as the super-servile fakir, Dmitri Gruzdev as the fleet bronze idol (the program called him Bronzo ) and Tatiana Gumba, who served as the fleshy and flashy centerpiece in a feverish wedding entertainment that might fit right in at the Tropicana.

The 32 shades of what here is the anticlimactic final scene danced with breathtaking unanimity, fluidity and discipline, a few shaky arabesques notwithstanding. The three able soloists in this otherworldly cave were led, according to the program, by Irina Chistiakova, but the lovely, long-legged ballerina on view looked suspiciously like Larissa Lezhnina.

Victor Fedotov and his seasoned St. Petersburg band did what they could with the rinky-tink tunes in the pit.