La Bayadère is one of those “classic” 19th century ballets – up there with Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty for its spectacle, majesty and lashings of tragic romance.
But unlike Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, La Bayadère does not lean on European folk tale traditions to draw in its audience.
Instead, its Imperial Russian Ballet Master creators (which included 19th century Russian ballet titan Marius Petipa) placed their dancers in an “imagined Indian setting” to tell a love story that follows an Indian warrior prince who falls for a beautiful Indian temple dancer (la bayadere), at the same time as he is betrothed to another.
