BEST NIKIYA Ever? from LA BAYADERE | Tamara Rojo Nikiya's Death Ballet Appreciation | Ballet Reign — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Eden: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ballet Reign!
2. 0:07E: You may be wondering why we have the hankies  today, and that is because we are going to be
3. 0:12appreciating a very sad piece of ballet rep[pertoire] today :(
4. 0:15if you watched our recent video on the Tarantella from Napoli, you will know that that was one of  our happy-place ballets,
5. 0:22and the ballet that we watched when we want to hype ourselves up, and put  ourselves in a good mood :)
6. 0:26BUT (hypothetically), what if you wanted a ballet to have a good cry to?
7. 0:32What if you were feeling really sad you want to have a good cry, what ballet would you watch for that?
8. 0:35lucky for you, we have just the thing :) [hankie twirl]
9. 0:38Jordan: The piece of rep that we're going to be appreciating with  y'all, today, is from La Bayadére,
10. 0:43in particular, "Nikiya's death scene", which occurred at the very end of act two.
11. 0:48E: it is a very tragic scene-- it's the false ending, almost, of the ballet,
12. 0:54which is very, very impactful because it kind of happens right in the middle of everything and  the tensions really come to a head, at this moment
13. 1:01E: So it's incredibly powerful, and  we're very excited to walk you guys through it,
14. 1:05talk about sort of the interpretations that can be  taken with this variation and the scene, in general.
15. 1:10So, grab your hanky, hit the like-button, and we will  roll right into it!
16. 1:16E: FoR cOntExT,
17. 1:18J: For those of you who haven't heard of the ballet, La Bayadére, "la bayadére" simply means, "the temple dancer", translated.
18. 1:24So our main ballet protagonist, our main female  ballet protagonist, is a temple dancer named Nikiya :)
19. 1:29and this particular scene features Nikiya in a  very interesting situation, a very sad situation:
20. 1:35Basically Nikiya is in love with Solor, and he is a  legendary warrior\hunter,
21. 1:40and they swore an eternal love to each other over the sacred fire <3
22. 1:43HOWEVER, the king decided to betroth Solor to his daughter, the princess, Gamzatti :(
23. 1:50and so now this  is at their engagement party, sort of their official engagement,
24. 1:54and Nikiya was called to dance as a part of the betrothal ceremony
25. 1:57to bless the union and also to please their gods to  bless them with a happy marriage :)
26. 2:04E: obviously, there are different plot twists that culminate in her  death, but we'll get into that in a little bit ;)
27. 2:10So the dancer that we're going to be watching today  is the legendary ballerina, *Tamara Rojo*
28. 2:16She was with the Royal Ballet at the time of this performance,
29. 2:20J: She's not dancing anymore, though.
30. 2:21E: yeah, she's not doing it anymore, which is sad because she
31. 2:23J: she is one of the best
32. 2:24E: perfect blend of artistry and technique.
33. 2:27So, yes, we thought she would be the  fitting candidate for today's ballet appreciation,
34. 2:31and she does a wonderful job of carrying the story  and really taking us with her
35. 2:36SO,
36. 2:36{CLAP}
37. 2:37J: here we go!
38. 2:38E: talk aside, let's go right into it! Grab your  tissues, you're gonna need it :) it's quite tragic
39. 2:44{Let's go!}
40. 2:45J: So, [the hight brahmin] comes in and he says, "here's the temple dancer; she's  going to dance and bless the couple"
41. 2:54See, [Nikiya] goes, "oh, it's yOu,"
42. 2:55and [Solor] he says, "oH, it's yOU"
43. 2:57E: yeah, they can bearly look at each other at this point, because they know what happened.
44. 3:02Solor is powerless to do anything about it,
45. 3:04J: yeah, because you can't just disrespect tHe KinG
46. 3:06E: she's also powerless because you can't disrespect tHe KinG,
47. 3:10so it's  just... it's just...
48. 3:11J: it's a VERY bad situation :(
49. 3:19{sad Nikiya music}
50. 3:25E: her control is absolutely  immaculate in this first port de bras
51. 3:33one might argue that the slower things seem easier, but they're actually incredibly hard
52. 3:43I just wanted to highlight: whenever she takes that  leg around to cross it in front,
53. 3:48that's not normal, usually, in most productions of  this variation.
54. 3:53Sometimes they'll just place the foot around in the cross position, there,  but she takes a full demi grand rand de jambe
55. 4:01to place the foot, there. Also, this takes an  incredible amount of control to carry the leg
56. 4:07all the way over, and she looks incredibly solid.
57. 4:10J: she looks so stable.
58. 4:11If you watch her back leg, you have to pivot on that heel to change your  direction. She doesn't waver like this on her foot;
59. 4:18if you zoom in really closely, she  is absolutely stable,
60. 4:23J: and that's very hard with pointe shoes because the pointe shoe has  a raised sole, so it's very easy to wobble.
61. 4:29but she has so much control that she's able to do  it without any wobbling, hardly at all.
62. 4:49J: *Immaculate*
63. 4:51E: there are no corners, either.  everything is so fluid.
64. 4:54J: yeah, it's a beautiful circle; sometimes when we do this port de bras, it  gets a little choppy, but this one is very seamless.
65. 5:02absolutely gorgeous
66. 5:11E: This is mastery: this is what mastery looks like.
67. 5:15J: complete mastery
68. 5:16E: she has never lost the artistry  for the sake of focusing on the balance.
69. 5:26J: Oh my goodness, did you see how much that grew?  and expanded?
70. 5:30E: with the orchestra swell!
71. 5:32J: with the orchestra swell... that really emphasized it, and I think that was really, beautifully done.
72. 5:38this is the epitome of what we tried  to accomplish in the classical ballet of today.
73. 5:49E: This is incredibly difficult; to do a big  jump in a slow variation. Because the landing, it tends to become heavy.
74. 5:56When you do  a big jump, you have all this momentum coming down, especially down to the knee.
75. 6:00And she has  to control that,
76. 6:02J: control the landing and make it look as controlled as everything else
77. 6:06E: you  almost have to fight gravity to come down slower
78. 6:09J: yeah, you definitely have to  fight against gravity
79. 6:12E: *illusion time*
80. 6:13in order to look like you jump slower, you have to jump  higher. Even though it seems like you would take
81. 6:18this first battment slowly, you actually have  to jump, put more force into
82. 6:23it than you normally would so you float  and then when you come down,
83. 6:28it has that illusion of you moving slower. So  it's actually quite a bit more tiring.
84. 6:51J: Oh my goodness...
85. 6:54no words.
86. 6:55absolute perfection.
87. 6:57E: okay,  already getting up on one leg from that whole backbend position,
88. 7:01and going up on one leg takes  a lot of strength, already.
89. 7:04To go straight from that into your relevé and hold it, like that,
90. 7:10J: That shows  that she has mastered her placement and her center of balance.
91. 7:14she is so familiar with where her  balance point is that she can just find it
92. 7:20from any precarious transition or position  prior and immediately be able to find it.
93. 7:26That shows maturity and mastery as an athlete  and a dancer,
94. 7:31with hardly any wavering at all
95. 7:36J: A lot of this variation, I always felt,   is that she has to bless the couple,
96. 7:42but partly in her own will, but partly not, obviously not because  she's very sad about the entire arrangement;
97. 7:49it's not the the right arrangement. But she  is, firstly, I mean, she tried to kill Gamzatti,
98. 7:57in the last act, and she obviously feels bad  about that, so I feel like, she kind of
99. 8:03feels like she has to make up for it, to  heal her reputation and to heal her errors.
100. 8:09But also because she loves Solor, and even though he's  not with her, she still loves him and wherever he
101. 8:15goes in life, she wants to make sure he's happy  and well and she just wants to bless him in that way.
102. 8:20But ultimately, very sorrowfully, because she  should have been with him.
103. 8:25and there's a lot of different ways you can play up the character, sometimes she's angry,
104. 8:29and she's praying to the gods to kill [Gamzatti],
105. 8:32E: pleading with them to  do something
106. 8:40I love this sequence because it shows her whole  thought-process. You can see that she's
107. 8:47very obviously praying to her gods, but at the  same time she always looks back at him,
108. 8:52to try and see if anything's happening, "do you feel the same way as I do?"
109. 9:05J: and at the same time, just, "can you do  anything about it?"
110. 9:09E: She's waiting for him to stand for her
111. 9:11J: Yeah, I think she would love for  him to stand up for her and for them.
112. 9:17But she sees the king and she understands he can't do anything about it.
113. 9:28E: Oh my goodness, {gasp} magical
114. 9:38J: she's so consistent; watch her do it the second  time.
115. 9:46On relevé, rolls down on that shoe,
116. 9:47scarcely wavered and into the beautiful développé to penché arabesque.
117. 9:52E: For context, as dancers a lot of us struggle with just a penché arabesque. If  you watch our "Ms. Mojo" video, you will know that
118. 10:01penché arabesque is actually one of the hardest  things.
119. 10:04lot of us dancers will struggle with that. Additionally, a lot of dancers will struggle  with rolling down cleanly on one leg
120. 10:11So, rolling down on one leg into that penché arabesque, TWICE, consistently, that is calibration, that is mastery.
121. 10:19J: Yeah, it means it wasn't just luck;  she mastered it, and she can do it consistently, every time.
122. 10:24E: Let's just analyze that; this is  incredible, because when she does this you can see
123. 10:29from her preparation, already, her ribs are incredibly closed, her core is  engaged. She is slightly forward,
124. 10:37J: In preparation for the next step.
125. 10:40E: You can see the  stillness, because if you're far back with your ribs,
126. 10:44and with your torso, the balance is going  to fall apart. You have to knit everything
127. 10:49together in the front, stabilize underneath the  hip, and then go into that.
128. 10:56And even in that penché, the ribs never open.
129. 10:58J: The ribs never open,  and she stayed exactly where she was; she didn't let herself fall forward
130. 11:04when she brought the  leg up. She stayed very, very, very held in the upper body, especially, and in the supporting hip.
131. 11:13E: Even if you were watching for the first time,
132. 11:15you didn't know what was going to happen to her, this  is already, almost... already her death sentence.
133. 11:20there's that kind of despair and that kind of,  just there's no hope for her.
134. 11:25Even though she keeps looking at him and keeps waiting on  him, every time, after she looks at him, like,
135. 11:30"are you going to do something?", after that, there's always  that sort of {sings quieter part of music}
136. 11:34Musically, you can hear that tension that she's waiting, "he could say something"  and then she's like,
137. 11:39"no, he won't do that, and I wouldn't want him to" it's just that amount of  turmoil is
138. 11:43J: the turbulence
139. 11:44E: just heartrending.
140. 12:00E: I will admit, I've always wanted to do this scene
141. 12:35E: Gamzatti sees the amount of turmoil Nikiya is in--and  also they had an argument, earlier, so she knows
142. 12:39exactly what Nikiya's going through, exactly.
143. 12:42And she, being the antagonist of the ballet, decides to exploit that.  so that's why you can see her, periodically
144. 12:48throughout the entire second act, she's always  trying to emphasize the fact that Solor is hers:
145. 12:53make sure he has her hand, she's with  him,
146. 12:59J: yeah, it's just, uolgh, it's so cruel.
147. 13:01E: She's not apologetic at this  point
148. 13:03J: she's not, because obviously, Nikiya did her wrong, tried to threaten her life.
149. 13:07and so  she says, "no, you don't"--
150. 13:09E: "you don't deserve anymore kindness"
151. 13:29E: It's too much for Nikiya, clearly,
152. 13:31J: she's about to leave, but then the nurse-- and if we if we roll back the tape a little bit,
153. 13:39you can see that they had this-- the king and Gamzatti and basically all of his crew --- had this all planned  out,
154. 13:46you can see the king was whispering to the nurse, "okay, go get the flowers, now"
155. 13:49Yeah, it was all very orchestrated, and [there] was a lot of scheming involved,
156. 13:54E: they want to  make sure she doesn't leave yet,
157. 13:56J: Yeah, because they have A giFt FoR hEr, a very sPeciAL gift for her.
158. 13:59E: So the nurse just gave her flowers,
159. 14:02J: and she said that they're from Solor, "they're for you <3 "
160. 14:06E: And this is actually a light of hope for Nikiya,
161. 14:14because she thinks that she has a bit of hope,  like Solor--it's sort of communicating the fact
162. 14:19that he still loves her even though he's forced  to go through with this marriage.
163. 14:24At least he still is thinking of her
164. 14:27J: Yeah, he's thinking of  her and his heart is truly with her. That's kind of a token of that, and so she feels  better,
165. 14:35knowing that it was against his will and he didn't want to be with Gamzatti, but  he just has no choice
166. 14:40So I think this is a little bit of a...
167. 14:43E: a resolution; it's very  bittersweet
168. 14:45J: it's bittersweet, but--
169. 14:46E: more bitter than sweet :)
170. 14:47J: yeah, but at least it kind of gives  her that consolation.
171. 15:00J: Now this part is different than  most productions in terms of
172. 15:04music and choreography-- this particular  section is usually a lot quicker:
173. 15:08{E sings music in dun+dahs}
174. 15:12{Nikiya: :) }
175. 15:18J: Yeah, but they they switched it out for a lot more  melancholy version, although the other version that's a little bit quicker,
176. 15:25it gives you  like that that feeling that she is overjoyed :D
177. 15:39she said, "this is from him!"
178. 15:41E: She's showing  everyone. She's so pleased because this is her last glimmer of hope,  really.
179. 15:49J: I like this version, actually, a lot
180. 15:57E: that was beautiful; it looked like she came down with an  extra lift
181. 16:01and that's what we always are looking for in ballet-- you never want  to just go up and then come straight down;
182. 16:07before you go down you have to do an extra  lift and then you can float down.
183. 16:15J: Now we go back to the original music, by  the way. This is the original, the typical music.
184. 16:23E: And here is the catch...
185. 16:25{oh no!}
186. 16:29E: There was a snake..
187. 16:30J: in the flowers...
188. 16:31E: and it bit her :(
189. 16:32J: A deadly snake, by the way.
190. 16:34Of course, all very craftily  schemed by Gamzatti and the king and all of them.
191. 16:41E: So the flowers had never been from  Solor, all along.
192. 17:02E: Of course, everyone's panicked
193. 17:10J: She looks at Gamzatti,
194. 17:11E: See, Gamzatti's already looking like, "oh, wHaT'S wRoNG?"
195. 17:14J: "wHaT'S wROnG? WhaT'S wRonG wiTH yOu?"
196. 17:17J: And she[Nikiya] goes, "the snake...
197. 17:18"the snake that bit me...
198. 17:21"it was all your fault"
199. 17:23E: yeah, she knows.
200. 17:25the king  says, "don't touch my daughter"
201. 17:28E: Gamzatti turned away from her, she's like, "you're on your own; I don't care. You deserved it!"
202. 17:32Everyone kind of abandons her at this point  because there's really nothing they can do.
203. 17:58E: You can see Solor cares so much  for her.
204. 18:00J: but the king says, "you go away, take Gamzatti out of here  because we don't need to see her die"
205. 18:06E: and here comes the other character, the high  brahmin, and now he secretly loves
206. 18:13Nikiya, himself, so he offers her an antidote to the  poison and says, "you can take it, I'll give it to
207. 18:21you, if you promise to marry me, instead"
208. 18:26and Nikiya  sees Solor leaving with Gamzatti and she says
209. 18:31J: that there's no point.
210. 18:33E: it's not worth  it.
211. 18:35And of course, the brahmin is heartbroken
212. 18:41E: and she dies
213. 18:51{sniffsniff...}
214. 18:55J: So that was Nikiya's death.
215. 18:58E: It is a very, incredibly,  powerful scene. Very immersive, I think.
216. 19:03what I appreciate about the scene is that how much  of Nikiya's psyche it captures.
217. 19:08you can really see the thoughts that are going through her head, so it's a very well-crafted death scene.
218. 19:14J: I think, emotionally, it's very complicated, and I think  that it definitely takes an artist to portray
219. 19:21that in a very clear way to an audience.
220. 19:24E: I really  think I've always, if I were to do a death scene, honestly, this would be... this would be the one.
221. 19:30It goes through all the range; reluctance, acceptance, tragedy, panic,  then shock and betrayal and hurt and heartache,
222. 19:39it there's so much, so many layers to it. As  dancers it's always a treat to be able to explore
223. 19:46sort of those areas, because ballet is generally a  very poised, very polite art form,
224. 19:52so to have some of these raw moments as a dancer, sometimes it's a treat just to let us break out
225. 19:58of the usual politeness, the usual courtesy and to  get something really wild.
226. 20:03But anyway, we want to applaud Tamara, it was absolutely beautiful.
227. 20:08J: You can't find another like that, I've never seen a more beautiful Nikiya.
228. 20:15J&E: Bravo to her {clapclapclapclapclap}
229. 20:18E: So we hope you guys enjoyed today's ballet appreciation, and hopefully we could give  you guys some insights
230. 20:24on the challenges that we as dancers face in portraying a dark scene like  this in ballet.
231. 20:30I think it really says a lot about the storytelling power ballet, because these  ballets were from long, long ago.
232. 20:37It's like a story that's passed down from generation to generation, and that something like this can
233. 20:44still move us, even to this day.
234. 20:45Make sure you comment below a
235. 20:46ballet that you've watched that really moved you,
236. 20:48because we'd be really interested  to know :)
237. 20:51J: If you like the video, "like" the video, and
238. 20:52if you really like the video then you can share  it with a friend. And if you really, really, really
239. 20:57like the video, then you can subscribe to our  channel if you haven't already,
240. 21:01because we post a lot of videos like this on our channel, and  you definitely don't want to miss the next one :)
241. 21:05E: Anndd I think that is all from us for now!
242. 21:07this is  Ballet Reign signing off, until the next video!
243. 21:11J: bye ~
244. 21:15E: Ladies and gentlemen...
245. 21:16{Shakes hankie}
246. 21:18{oh boy.}
247. 21:21E: tHiS is BaLLeT rEigN
248. 21:23J: I love that we have the Energizer  Bunny on your suggestion
249. 21:25E: I KEEP HAVING-- yeah I know <3
250. 21:29J: Very, very, vemonous snake
251. 21:31venomous?
252. 21:31venames.
253. 21:32vemuniss
254. 21:32E: okaylet'stryitagain.
255. 21:34E: Oh we're about to die
256. 21:36{see u later}