La Bayadère

Rachel Beaujean is responsible for the staging and additional choreography and worked alongside Kalpana Raghuraman, Dr Priya Srinivasan and Ted Brandsen on the concept and libretto. The sets and costumes by Jérôme Kaplan are inspired by seventeenth-century India but also reference other eras and cultures. The music of Ludwig Minkus, whose melodic and rhythmic compositions were instrumental in shaping nineteenth-century classical ballet, forms the musical backbone of this production. 

A tragic love story 

The new La Bayadère is set in Southeast India, where the Dutch established several trading posts during the era of the Dutch East India Company. The sincere love between Nikiya, a spiritual temple dancer, and Solor, a captain of mixed heritage, challenges the expectations of race and caste. However, Solor allows himself to be manipulated by the Dutch governor William Carel Hartsinck, who forces him to marry his daughter, Alida. When Alida discovers that Solor already loves another, she decides to eliminate Nikiya. Overcome with grief and guilt, Solor drifts into a dream state. In the iconic ‘Kingdom of the Shades’, he sees Nikiya once more, but she remains out of reach. The consequences of the wrong choices will haunt him forever. 

Tribute to Amany 

This new version of La Bayadère also pays tribute to Amany, an Indian dancer who, through her performances in nineteenth-century Europe, influenced ballet, music and opera. Amany and Nikiya symbolise generations of bajadères—Indian temple dancers whose status was lost through colonisation. Through projections, Amany and her fellow dancers are brought back to life, recognising their lasting impact on ballet and other Western cultural forms.