Punjarasantankal, March 21, 2026

Reimagining La Bayadère

 Hanne M. de Bruin

On March 26, the Dutch National Ballet (DNB) will present a new production of the famous 19th-century ballet La Bayadère, featuring a substantially revised storyline. The creative team—Rachel Beaujean, Kalpana Raghuraman, Dr. Priya Srinivasan, and Ted Brandsen—has deliberately distanced their libretto from the orientalist perspective of the original version of the ballet that premiered in St. Petersburg in Russia in 1877. This original version featured elements that are deeply problematic by contemporary standards. It presented a fantasy India bearing no resemblance to historical reality, populated by stereotypical fakirs, exotic temple dancers in diaphanous harem pants, a lascivious Brahmin, and a confused jumble of religious symbols—including a dancing Shiva in gold lamé and a Buddha statue. Most notoriously, it featured young dancers performing in blackface to emphasize their racial otherness, reminiscent of the Dutch Zwarte Piet tradition.

The ballet's titular character, the bayadère—from the Portuguese balhadeira (dancer)—is often conflated with a devadasi, a female temple dancer who was ritually married to a Hindu deity. The devadasis or “servants of God” occupied a complex social position: neither courtesans nor nuns, they were accomplished artists whose dance combined spiritual devotion with sensual expression. They often were supported by wealthy patrons.

A Parallel Production: Paarvai or The Gaze

While DNB developed their revision, a smaller-scale musical theater production was taking shape in a South Indian village. Paarvai or The Gaze, created by Indian theater actor-singer P. Rajagopal and myself—a Dutch Indologist and dramaturg—emerged from our shared frustration with the stereotypical representation of the bayadère. In the original ballet, she exists primarily as a sensual spectacle for the elite European (male) gaze, with little agency beyond her self-chosen death when her beloved marries her rival.

As part of my research for Paarvai, I initiated a correspondence with DNB in late 2022 that led to a brief, yet intensive online exchange with assistant artistic director and former DNB dancer Rachel Beaujean. I was curious: how is the “Indianness" of the bayadère expressed through movement? How much interpretive freedom do dancers have in this technically demanding role? Rachel arranged interviews with two principal ballerinas, Anna Tsygankova and Anna Ol, who both danced the role of the bayadère. Anna Ol described it as "a dramatic role in which you can truly act, not just execute classical steps." She also noted that while "the legs perform classical movements, the upper body is remarkably free" in the first act. Watching the earlier 2016 DNB production, Rajagopal and I were captivated by the bayadère's movements in this section: hands intertwined overhead suggesting a serpent, the torso at times arching far backward while maintaining precarious balance on pointe. Yet these ethereal, skyward-reaching movements seemed fundamentally at odds with South Indian classical dance, which emphasizes groundedness and connection to the earth.

At the time of our exchange, funding uncertainties threatened the DNB’s proposed production of La Bayadère in 2026. Rachel and I parted ways, each pursuing our separate projects.

Reclaiming Agency for the bayadère

Paarvai is our artistic response to La Bayadère—a ballet that, as Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said might argue, reflects and legitimizes Western cultural superiority and colonial power through its orientalist lens. In our production we shift the colonial European gaze to 19th-century South India, zooming in on the lives of ordinary people—those "exotic blackfaces" whose stories unfold beyond the sight lines of colonial and indigenous elites. Our protagonist, Kamaladevi, is a celebrated actress in the Kattaikkuttu theater tradition—a woman with agency, ideas, and determination. We asked ourselves: How did she see the world? What were her thoughts and feelings?

My research revealed a shocking coincidence: the premiere of La Bayadère in 1877 occurred simultaneously with the Great Madras Famine of 1877-1878. This catastrophe, caused by two years of drought compounded by British colonial mismanagement—including grain hoarding to inflate prices—claimed approximately 5.5 million lives. The contrast between La Bayadère and South Indian reality at that time could not be starker: an opulent orientalist spectacle performed for European elites while millions starved in the very region it purported to represent.

An Unlikely Alley

Our second major inspiration came from the travel writings of Dutch merchant Jacob Haafner (1754-1809), an anti-colonial voice far ahead of his time. Haafner possessed genuine affection for India—its languages, architecture, nature, people, and diverse cultural practices. His 1808 travel account describes his passionate love for Mamia, a devadasi dancer, with whom he had an affair until her premature death.

We set portions of Paarvai in Pulicat, an 18th-century natural harbour more significant than nascent Madras, where the Dutch East India Company operated under the protection of Fort Geldria (later destroyed by the British). From his writings, it is unclear what Haafner's exact business dealings were: possibly cotton, indigo, dyes, gemstones, spices, timber, or opium - commodities traded across the Indian Ocean, Indonesia, China, and Europe. We also know that the Dutch were deeply implicated in South India's slave trade and that Pulicat was an important hub for this trade. In our play, this is reflected by the outcry of a starving farm labourer offering his wife to sell himself into slavery in exchange for rice so that she can feed their family.

Though Haafner lived in the 18th century, we took dramatic license to place him a century later, allowing him to attend Kamaladevi's performance and meet her afterward. Their love story grows from shared experiences: both are orphans, both possess deep social conscience. Jacob lost his father, who worked as a physician for the Dutch East India Company (VOC), before their ship reached the Cape of Good Hope, leaving the 12-year-old to fend for himself. Kamaladevi, orphaned and widowed as a child, escaped her cruel in-laws. Found near death, she was adopted by the female leader of a theater troupe who trained her in the craft.

Colonial Power and the Gaze

An arrogant British photographer and sister of the Governor of Madras enters the scene. Intend on gaining a name for herself as the first female photographer documenting exotic India--in line with the 19th century female explorer--she makes clear her romantic interest in Jacob while dismissing Kamaladevi as unsuitable—"a simple actress, no match for him." This love triangle echoes La Bayadère, but our characters possess different qualities, motivations, and social backgrounds.

Historically, our photographer was a man: Willoughby Wallace Hooper was a British military officer who left us his grotesque 1877 famine photographs in which emaciated men, women, and children are arranged like chess pieces. These images raise disturbing questions about the colonial gaze and the profound lack of empathy colonizers displayed toward their Indian subjects. We recreate one of Hooper's photographs live on stage.

Exposing Corruption

A first reading of Paarvai takes place in August 2023. Presenting for the first time something born from your own imagination and lived experience to a public audience is both exhilarating and nerve-wracking. The play contains two short theatrical pieces performed by Kamaladevi. In the first, she plays Surpanakha from the Ramayana epic—a woman who openly expresses her desire for the handsome Lakshmana. Such behaviour is, of course, inappropriate and disqualifies her as a "good woman". As a result, she is punished cruelly: Lakshmana mutilates her, cutting off her nose before sending her back to her brother—an act that precipitates war. In the second piece, Kamaladevi plays Neelambal, a traveling, celibate woman whose songs expose corruption and the famine's true causes.

Both colonial and indigenous elites engaged in an intricate dance of capital, power, self-aggrandizement, and status, intertwined with prejudice and racial contempt. The British employed dubashes (literally "two-language speakers") as intermediaries. In Paarvai this role is performed by the obsequious Brahmin Bhuvanagiri, broker between the nouveau-riche Zamindar Kandasami Mudaliyar and the British Governor of Madras. Bhuvanagiri also harbours an unrequited desire for Kamaladevi.

Kandasami commissions Bhuvanagiri to organize a lavish inauguration for a grandiose temple he has built in Pulicat—a monument to the Zamindar's vanity—featuring, among other extravagant things, Kamaladevi's troupe. A feast during a famine, while the construction labourers who worked on the temple remain unpaid and unfed. Kandasami invites his colleague businessmen, including Jacob Haafner and the British photographer, to attend the inauguration. When Kamaladevi-as-Neelambal exposes corruption through her performance, the starving populace revolts, taking the elite captive and threatening the Zamindar and his wife with death unless they pay up or reveal their hidden contraband. Kamaladevi intervenes. To prevent further violence and support her determination to provide food to the hungry, Haafner promises the villagers they can bring the rice he has stored on the Madras quay for shipment to feed all of them.

Bridging Theatrical Traditions

The Gaze was performed by local Kattaikkuttu theatre actors, actresses, and musicians. This epic musical theater tradition features a grand, sometimes melodramatic performance style with sung and danced entrances and dialogues—perfect for the two theatrical pieces featuring Kamaladevi. However, other characters, in particular the photographer (speaking English and broken Tamil), Jacob Haafner, and Kamaladevi in her offstage moments—required a more naturalistic acting. The play explores numerous hierarchical relationships between common people, servants, actors, a Brahmin, the Zamindar, and white foreigners, whose physicality, gestures, and clothing signal social status. This proved confrontational for the Kattaikkuttu performers, themselves from marginalized communities, for whom submissive body language and types of clothing reflect lived experiences of caste and class difference.

Interracial Love

After peace returns to Pulicat and the worst hunger is satisfied, Jacob finds Kamaladevi alone. She refuses to speak. Finally, she reveals that the British photographer tries to sideline her, claiming she's unworthy of him—which Haafner immediately dismisses as "nonsense." While Kamaladevi expertly portrays love and desire onstage, she struggles with these emotions in her own life. Jacob reveals his own love for an extraordinary woman: she is beautiful, an artist whose performances and social conscience erase the boundary between white and black.... Their eyes meet and hold—for the discerning observer a nod to the two creators of Paarvai and their own love story. Ultimately, it is Jacob's loyal servant and friend—Munnusami, a freed slave—who recognizes that his master speaks of Kamaladevi, and that their love is genuine.

In the ballet, the bayadère remains unattainable, conform the romantic tradition of the times. After her death, she appears in the form of countless shades teasing her lover to in what is the most famous scene of La Bayadère, the "Kingdom of the Shades." By contrast, Kamaladevi and Jacob Haafner's love is tangible and real, preserved in the memory of the local people they saved from starvation. In gratitude, the villagers built a mandapam—a rest house offering free food to travellers—named after Kamaladevi and Jacob "Boss."

Paarvai is a posthumous monument to the 5.5 million nameless victims of the Great Madras Famine—and a counter-narrative to the orientalist fantasy that premiered in St. Petersburg while they perished.

Acknowledgments

The writing and production of Paarvai was made possible by a grant from the Dutch Embassy in New Delhi. The Tamil text was published in 2024 by Kalachuvadu Publishers, Nagercoil, India. Production blogs are available here. Tthe performance with English subtitles can be viewed on the Sangam’s YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/gK62XAtAv0g?si=TB3GQ_bSWF2P7kWw).