With ‘Kingdom of the Shades,’ ‘Carmen,’ Boston Ballet scores
Nineteenth-century story ballets like “Raymonda” and “La Bayadère” are loved more for their scores and choreography than for the actual stories, which are rife with problematic stereotypes. In February, Boston Ballet presented artistic director Mikko Nissinen’s “reimagining” of “Raymonda,” a 75minute condensation that removed evil Saracen knight Abderakhman from the narrative. Now the company is paring “La Bayadère,” which it last presented in 2013, down to that ballet’s most popular segment: the 35-minute “Kingdom of the Shades,” leaving behind the fakirs, the temple dancers, the tiger hunters, the papier-mâché elephant, and all the murderous plotting. In the current production at the Citizens Bank Opera House, “Kingdom of the Shades” is joined by resident choreographer Jorma Elo’s “Carmen,” which hasn’t been seen here since 2009, though it was scheduled for March 2020 before COVID hit. Complementary tales of love gone wrong, “Kingdom of the Shades” and “Carmen” make for a thoughtful program, and Thursday’s opening-night performance was superb.
“La Bayadère” debuted in St. Petersburg in 1877, the same year as “Swan Lake.” Indian temple dancer Nikiya and hunter Solor have pledged eternal love, but the High Brahmin covets Nikiya, and the Rajah wants Solor to marry his daughter Gamzatti, who resolves the situation by slipping Nikiya a basket with a poisonous snake. Solor consoles himself with opium, falls asleep, and dreams; that’s where “Kingdom of the Shades,” staged by former Paris Opera Ballet étoile Florence Clerc, begins.
The Shades, 24 in this production, descend a zigzag ramp in a slow alternation of arabesques allongées and backbends with arms en couronne. After a hypnotic nine minutes, they’re joined by three solo Shades and then the Shade of the recently departed Nikiya. Solor and Nikiya have two Adagio duets, in the second of which they’re tethered by a long white veil; each solo Shade has her own brief variation. At the end, Solor brings the veil back; Nikiya takes it, and he lifts her in triumph, as if they were celebrating a spiritual union.
There’s a certain independence about Nikiya’s dancing in this scene; she’s not pleased that Solor was going to wed Gamzatti. On Thursday, however, Ji Young Chae’s Nikiya was inclined to forgive Jeffrey Cirio’s repentant Solor, and they made a warmly chaste couple, especially in their set of easy sissonne lifts. Chae was pristine and light, with gazelle-like grands jetés, a gratifying manège of tours jetés, and a fabulous concluding sequence of soutenu and piqué diagonals flanking an arabesque voyagée scamper that zoomed backward at Formula One speed. Cirio opened with a neat 45-degree revoltade and was heroic in his closing manège of double assemblé turns.
The well-matched trio of solo Shades were equally rewarding. Lauren Herfindahl gave amplitude and volume to her relevé vocabulary. Seo Hye Han contributed exquisite pointing and a relevé-élancé arabesque run that actually traveled. Chyrstyn Fentroy served up crisp, high-flying cabrioles.
A Boston Ballet commission, Elo’s “Carmen” had its premiere in 2006 before reappearing in a revised form in 2009 under the name “Carmen/Illusions.” The score is the 45-minute “Carmen Suite” that Rodion Shchedrin composed for Alberto Alonso’s 1967 ballet. Shchedrin hopscotches through the opera’s themes, drawing also on Bizet’s incidental music for “L’Arlésienne” and his opera “La jolie fille de Perth,” and he reduces the orchestration to spiky strings and percussion, just the right partner for Elo’s robotic gymnastics and gyrations. Mikki Kunttu’s lighting underlines the now militant, now ghostly feel of the music, and so did the Boston Ballet Orchestra’s detailed playing Thursday under music director Mischa Santora. Joke Visser’s handsome costumes let the dancers strut their stuff.
Elo’s stripped-down narrative opens with Mikaela centerstage, the men clustered on her left, the women on her right. She’s come to the big city in search of her village sweetheart, Don José, but he’s in the process of falling for Carmen while dodging the bullying attentions of his boss Zuniga. Carmen, to strains of the “Habanera,” seduces all the men while Don José watches from a bifurcated amphitheater backdrop that suggests the halves of a bullring. Carmen beats up one of the other women; Zuniga orders Don José to escort her to prison, but he lets her escape and winds up in jail. The women all swoon over Escamillo, his “Toreador” song getting subsumed in a welter of percussion. Carmen snags Escamillo, but she doesn’t want to let Mikaela have Don José. Don José sneaks up on Zuniga and stabs him repeatedly; then when Carmen rejects him, he stabs her and is hauled away. Standing centerstage in a spotlight that ignores Carmen’s corpse, Mikaela mourns, or maybe just wonders.
All this came into sharp focus Thursday. Lia Cirio’s sophisticated, seductive, strong-minded Carmen contrasted well with Yue Shi’s naive but appealing Don José. Viktorina Kapitonova gave nuance and a delighted innocence to Mikaela, who in a nostalgic duet with Don José reminds him of their childhood games and country pleasures. Lasha Khozashvili was a commanding, uncomplicated Escamillo who dealt easily with Don José’s pathetic challenge; his nocturne duet with Cirio brought out Carmen’s softer side. Shi, Kapitonova, and Cirio were especially affecting in a trio danced to Don José’s lush Flower Song.
Some plot elements still puzzle, like Don José’s vicious stabbing of Zuniga. And Zuniga’s role and that of Carmen’s friend Mercedes both still seem underwritten; Tyson Ali Clark and Haley Schwan did what they could. But Elo has distilled and refined the piece since 2009. This is his best “Carmen” yet.