Tokyo Performances

La Bayadère

National Ballet of Japan
Opera Palace
January 16, 2011

My first experience at the ballet in Tokyo. I had seen "La Bayadère" a number of times in Moscow and was interested to see how this would compare. Well, this was not the Bolshoi.

As usual in Tokyo, the production values were excellent. The set was beautiful as were the costumes. The music, terrible as it is, was well performed by the Tokyo symphony Orchestra under Alexei Baklan.

But, the dancing was very mechanical and clichéd. The most famous scene - the Kingdom of the Shades - was very beautiful. But coming away, I had no lasting memories of anything sensational. My strongest memory was of the audience clapping whenever the music grew loud and then stopped or whenever a dance ended whether it had been very good or not.

And there was some poor sod whose job it was to examine the orchestra seats with clipboard in hand to make sure that no one had sat down in an empty unsold seat - only in Japan would they be that anal.

posted by Larry Wells @ 6:58 PM