I have created a monument more lasting than bronze

And higher than the royal structure of the pyramids,

That neither devouring rain, nor the wild North Wind

May be able to destroy, nor the immeasurable

Succession of years and the flight of time.

.....................................................-- Horace, Ode 3.30

This adagio is probably the most breathtaking piece of classical ballet - it’s so simple yet so mesmerizing, just the pure beauty of the movement! For me it’s the greatest joy to perform it.

-- Maria Khoreva

In Petipa’s original version, ballerinas performed the Kingdom of the Shades in heeled shoes, later changed to pointe. Other changes include the Dance of the Golden Idol, which was added by Nikolai Zubkovsky in 1948.


https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... segerstrom

Alina Somova danced as Nikiya and is a principal dancer for the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg. Her flexibility, form, and strength were outstanding as we saw her character’s passion within every breathtaking adagio. Somova was born in Leningrad and graduated from the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in 2003. In 2003 she was admitted to the Mariinsky Ballet and one year later was promoted to soloist and principal since 2008.

Award-winning dancer Kimin Kim, lept as Solor to a standing ovation on his solo performances, in which he defied gravity with grace. Attendees left Kim overwhelmed with gratitude and repeat applause breaks for his spell bounding performance. Born in Seoul, Kim graduated from the Korea National University of Arts. He was a soloist with the Mariinsky Ballet from 2012, and since 2015 he has been a principal dancer.

Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra - La Bayadère

Amid the sweeping vistas and grand temples of mystical India, Petipa's great Russian classic is a glorious epic of eternal love and godly revenge. La Bayadère offers tour de force performances by the Mariinsky's legendary ballet stars as the tale's doomed temple dancer Nikiya, the warrior who betrays her, Solor, and her archrival, Gamzatti. But nothing will prepare you for the spellbinding "Kingdom of the Shades," a showcase for the corps de ballet in gossamer white tutus, floating in perfect synchronicity across the stage, as sublime as angels arriving from heaven.

Time now for Solor to launch into romantic guilty regrets via opium-smoked dreams. Dozing on his bed, he conjures up Nikia, in fact a panoply of 32 Nikias, plus soloists, in classical ballet’s legendary “Kingdom of the Shades.” One by ghostly one, the Shades materialize, winding their way through the Himalayas, behind a misty scrim that thankfully gives way so we can see the beauty of their wraith-ness, their luminescence in gauzy white as they step forward and arch their spines backward, each leaving room for a successor Shade, creating a devotional tableau without equal. It all stops after that; there is no next scene, no destruction of the temple as ordained in the original production and also in the ABT version. Yet it seems complete. Nikia and Solor will be together; we can tell from their final pas de deux. What more is there to say?

So what makes the “Kingdom of the Shades” immortal? Might as well ask why there are Himalayas or ballerinas. The short answer is there’s no ballet — or none your reviewer can think of — that calls up such a ravishing combination of simplicity and difficulty.

Petipa’s genius, and the expansiveness of its staging, the requirements it embodies — the training, the practice, the devotion leading to the performance, every performance, seems to touch all who are in it and all who see it. It’s expansive and endless, yet its magic world is a gift that’s self-contained. It’s everything — and yet it’s just a ballet.