Bolshoi Ballet: La Bayadère

The Bolshoi Ballet performs Marius Petipa's 'La Bayadère', an unashamedly melodramatic slice of nineteenth-century Orientalism, telling the tale of a temple dancer's doomed love for a noble warrior. The ballet is probably best known for the 'Kingdom of the Shades' scene, a slightly incongruous but totally beautiful 'white act' featuring the whole corps de ballet ethereally descending to the stage in perfect unison.