KIMIN KIM, PRINCIPAL OF MARIINSKY, EXPLODES ON STAGE OF MET IN LA BAYADERE JUNE 1ST

Kimin Kim as Solor in ABT's La Bayadère 
Ⓒ Kent G. Becker

Kimin Kim, Principal Dancer with the Mariinsky, Returns to The Stage of the Met in ABT's La Bayadère

June 1, 2018

Kimin Kim, a Principal Dancer of the Mariinsky Ballet, returned to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House this week for the first time in three years, once again performing the role of Solor in American Ballet Theater's production of La Bayadère. Tall and fine boned, with ideally proportioned facial features, Kim emanates a unique brand of magnetism complimented by an impressive command of the stage. Audiences were astounded by the fluidity of his movement, his animal prowess and astounding elevation, which at times defies the limits of human imagination. He is capable of traversing the stage of the Met on the diagonal in only two jetés and thus, can travel further in the air than any other male ballet dancer I have seen since the beginning of my ballet going years in New York in 1968. Throughout the evening, Kim executed one feat after the next with complete equanimity, exhibiting a sense of fearlessness that has the power to ignite the audience before his feet have even left the ground. At 25, he is among the most exciting male ballet dancers to emerge on the world stage.

The diminutive Hee Seo played Solor’s love interest, the beautiful temple dancer, Nikiya. Each a native of South Korea, the pair would seem ideally matched, but Seo is still striving to master this role and her energies were singularly focused. David Hallberg had been scheduled to dance with her, but had been forced to withdraw due to injury at the last minute. Kim was flown into town on short notice; it is impossible to know how much time he and Seo had to rehearse. However, Kim was equally matched by prima ballerina assoluta, Gillian Murphy, who played Nikiya's rival, Gamzatti, the Radjah Dugumanta's headstrong daughter who is also in love with Solor. In ancient India, rulers and warriors were members of the same "Kshatriya" caste, each, in his own way, relied upon to maintain order in society. Nikiya, however, serves the High Brahmin and her temple; she has no power over the affairs in the world. The High Brahmin offers her his love, but she rejects him, and he vows to murder his rival, Solor.

Basically, La Bayadère is a pastiche of 19th century exoticism reflecting colonial stereotypes of Hindu culture conveyed in various forms of Orientalism. Everything is thrown into the production, form aspects of Vedic rites, Bengali Art and the supernature powers of temple sculpture. A melodramatic drama set in Royal India, its characters are dominated by the constraints of a brutal caste system and an unbearably hot climate. Nearly everyone is willing to commit murder just to get room service, which seems the natural order of things in a world in which cause and effect don't mean diddly squat and people are still trying to live without air conditioning. The only cool-headed one among the lot is the dutiful warrior, Solor, a virile young man who sleighs tigers for breakfast but cannot sort out his love life. Torn between his love for Nikiya, the beautiful temple dancer, and his loyalty to Rajah Dugumanta, the ruler he serves, events unfold that reveal his singular flaw: a fickle heart.

Initially, Solor swears his love to Nikiya over the Eternal Flame, which symbolizes purity. The High Brahmin catches them in the act and is infuriated. Meanwhile, the Rajah's daughter has fallen in love with Solor's portrait. When he is summoned by the Rajah and introduced to Gamzatti, he is suddenly smitten by her beauty. As a warrior, he lives in the physical world, not the spiritual world, and is easily distracted by displays of wealthy, power and a good looking woman. The Rajah turns on the screws, requesting that Solor marry Gamzatti, and Solor caves in the face of the Rajah's power and prestige. He and Gamzatti become betrothed. The subject of the ballet is, thus, the evolution of the warrior's soul. Will Solor remain invested in the social hierarchy and continue to lead a life in which he keeps the world at bay, focusing on material gain, or will he mature and become capable of manifesting a victory on the battlefield of love? First he must overcome his indecisive nature. But how? Is it possible for a warrior to make the transition from one identity to the other?

The High Brahmin arrives after Solor leaves the Rajah, informing the latter of Solor's secret pact with Nikiya. He expects the Rajah to call off the marriage and have Solor murdered. Meanwhile, Gamzatti attempts to bribe Nikiya into giving Solor up by offering her jewelry, but Nikiya gets mad and pulls a knife on her. Murphy has grown slightly top heavy of late, and with her newly acquired curves, signature flame red hair and creamy complexion, was the perfect rival for the pale, dark haired, fragile Seo. As Gamzatti, Murphy's dazzling display of Italian fouéttes was as flashy and garish as her attempt to rattle her diamonds in Nikiya's face. But after her life is threatened, Gamzatti flees the scene and goes running straight to Daddy. Father and daughter plot Nikiya's murder together, sealing her fate. These Hindus don't mess around.

Gillian Murphy in ABT's La Bayadère

 

A Gamzatti and Solor's betrothal celebration Nikiya is obligated to perform a dance in honor or the happy couple. Half-way through, she is presented with a floral bouquet containing a poisonous snake. Nikiya suffers a fatal bite and collapses. As she lays, dying, she is offered an antidote to the poison that would reverse its effects. She refuses it, choosing to die rather than go on living in a world that is incapable of accommodating true love. It is obvious that Gamzatti's betrothal to Solor has brought about Nikiya's death. Solor runs to her side then flees the scene, overwhelmed by guilt. He languishes in the quarters of his cavernous tent, smoking opium until he lapses into a drug-induced dream. This is the point at which the ballet really takes off.

What follows is The Kingdom of the Shades, a breathtaking "white" ballet in which the father of classicism, Petipa, appears to have anticipated the abstract domain of plotless dancing pioneered in the 20th century by George Balanchine. La Bayadère was 5 acts long when it premiered in 1877, but by the close of the century this particular excerpt had been frequently extracted and performed for its own sake. Solor finds himself in an enchanted forest in the foothills of a mountain range in the Himilayas. Female spirits called "Shades" descend the slopes, single-file, in a series of arabesques cambés, their procession slowly filling the stage in linear formations that extend upstage as far as the eye can see. When the tableau is complete, the corps de ballet rises on pointe in unison. The floor appears to rise a few inches from the ground. What follows is a virtual ceremony in the air in which Solor communes with the ghost of Nikiya, a glittering vision in white who appears above him in the distance. She glides into his midst on pointe and they dance together. An eerie tension exists between them that suggests that Nikiya has not yet come to terms with Solor's betrayal. This schism complicates what is already an esoteric conversation taking place in a spiritual dimension. Solor, the warrior, must navigate the delicate and complex terrain of a woman's broken heart and somehow win back her trust. But how? In awe of her beauty, purity and silence, he explores Nikiya's shattered soul, continually reaching for her in spite of the guard she puts up. Raising her up repeatedly, literally and figuratively, he elevates her above all women. By the end of this first pas de deux, Solor has finally given it up to love, committing himself to the prospect of an eternal life with Nikiya in this strange, new dimension. When she floats upstage and disappears, he follows in her wake, executing a series of luxurious, elongated strides, his eyes raised directly to the sky. It takes up to 8 full measures to complete; many male dancers performing this passage in a hurry and rush off without completing each stride. But Kim performed each step slowly and luxuriantly, savoring every inch of it. The hypnotic pace of his feet reflected the slow pace of an opium-induced dream, so cleverly characterized by the glacial tempo of the score by Minkus. Solor's eyes are raised to convey the spiritual bond that he has established between himself and Nikiya. He no longer needs eyes to see her or follow her. The two are forever now forever linked. Solor has completed the first step in the challenge of love: surrender.

Breathtaking choral dancing follows, along with multiple pas de deux between Nikiya and Solor, variations by several of the Shades and virtuoso solos for Solor that rank among the most technically challenging variations ever created for a male dancer. One in particular is attributed to Chabukiani in a version of the ballet that was restaged for the Kirov in 1941. The present version was restaged for ABT by Natalia Makarova in 1980, but however many different parts comprise The Kingdom of the Shades, the concept of the ballet and its choreography belong to Petipa. Using a story with a theme similar to the libretto of Aida, he created a vehicle in which the conflict between duty and love is beautifully delineated.The Kingdom of the Shades is a map of the warrior's evolution as a lover. In each variation, Solor soars higher and higher, completing multiple tours in the air as he plumbs the depth of his love for Nikiya. As he dances, he grows increasingly exhilarated and elated. This is a manifestation of the growth of his soul in response to his surrender to the glory of love--the proof Solor has needed all along in order to overcome his indecisiveness. His display of virtuosity is not a mere physical exercise, but an expression of the endless potential ignited in an individual when he is seized by the profound human emotion of love. Original sketches for this Act were done from illustrations by Gustave Dore Angel's vision of Dante's Paradiso.

In a passage in one of Solor's variations, Kim circled the stage counter-clockwise in a series of breath-taking double assemblés en tournant, landing each time in a generous but precise plié in second position. During his masterful execution of this feat, I could hear members of the audience gasp. Rudolf Nureyev first performed this series of steps in the west while on tour in Paris in 1961. Kim's approach to it transformed a variation that can easily be perceived as a display of masculine bravura into artistry of the first order. Like Nureyev, he puts as much into the steps on the ground that link the leaps and tours that comprise his exploration of the air, giving a fluidity that connects everything he does. This joining of heaven and earth was Nureyev's legacy, a seamless thruline of poetic beauty that was even evident during passages of his most testosterone-driven dancing. Kim has a similar poetry about him, approaching this series of tours en l'air from a place of pure concentration that makes no attempt to hide the size of the challenge before him but faces the task with equanimity. In the calm, open expression of in his eyes heading into it, what emerges is courage as tangible as the steps he executes, uplifting the viewer through the individual restoration of human dignity before Kim, as a dancer, has even left the ground. This man is fearless. Sailing back down to the earth each time in a lush, deep plié, there was a glow on his face that reflected the joy of the process for him as a technician. Bringing both clarity and passion to his role as Solor, the overall result was an intricate mosaic of glorious dance, heartfelt drama and the overarching stamp of personal integrity.


In Act II Kim partnered the lovely Seo with skill and confidence. Although there were no bumps in the road for her along the way, she navigated the challenges of the terrain with such caution that ultimately, she forced the audience to remain on the outside of her performance. Nevertheless, her pristine appearance was dazzling. In a shimmering white tutu, rhinestones lighting up the center part of her jet black hair, she extended her leg in a developé á la seconde that pointed straight to the ceiling, underscoring the supernatural nature of Nikiya's reunion with Solor. Certainly, Seo is well cast as the long suffering Nikiya, but she simply has a way to go before making this role her own.

Hee Seo and Kimin Kim in ABT's La Bayadère

In spite of the fact that Kim saved the day by flying into New York to fill in for David Hallberg, each of his performances at ABT on May 29th and June 1st was ignored by every major dance critic in the United States. Three years ago, in 2015, Kim previously did the role of Solor in La Bayadère with ABT. Alastair Macaulay praised his performance in the context of a larger article about the genesis of Bayadère. ABT's current production is not one of his personal favorites, nor is the ballet. He considers its choreographic limitations to be egregious. In adding to his brief praise of Kim, he suggested flatly that ABT should avoid inviting him back in future if it were only going to dance the role of Solor. This strangely dismissive form of praise ignores the magnitude of Kim's talent. He is such a great dancer that he is capable of improving any vehicle he appears in. Macaulay may dislike Natalia Makarova' production of La Bayadère, but in any production Acts I and III are but bookends of Act II, The Kingdom of the Shades. They are meant to be melodramatic but also offer many dancers the chance to show off their acting chops and explore the extreme highs and lows the tory travels over, a rocky road filled with irony and pathos. Until I saw Kimin Kim's performance as Solor, I did not understand the theme of the ballet nor perceive how the warrior's personal journey unfolds in the context of the narrative. He is that good. At the end of the evening, he received a standing ovation. I hate to ask the question, but is it possible that western critics do not take Kim as seriously as they should? Kim says he feels there are no barriers for Asian ballet dancers in the West. But he is unusually attractive, technically impeccable and one gets the impression that he is well liked wherever he goes. At the same time, he appears younger on stage than his years, which may appear to deprive his persona of certain gravitas that, at this stage of his career, he may very much need. Cultural exchange is the life blood of ballet and, in spite of ABT’s new policy of importing fewer celebrity dancers on a regular basis, dancers such as Kimin Kim are of such a high caliber that they should be invited to dance by ABT—or any American company—as often as possible. When he flies into the Big Apple to dance, let major New York critics and Indie critics alike do him the honor of attending his performances and leaving the politics of the ballet world out of their reviews. Kim has earned our astonishment and our praise. He should not have to earn our acceptance.