La Bayadère - Entrée de l'ombres - Kirov Mariinsky Ballet (1986)

The subject of The Kingdom of the Shades ("Le Royaume des Ombres") is not really death, although everybody in it except the hero is dead. It's Elysian bliss, and its setting is eternity. The long slow repeated-arabesque sequence creates the impression of a grand crescendo that seems to annihilate all time. No reason it could not go on forever...
The incomparable Viktor Fedotov is the conductor. Clement Crisp once described him as the 'prince of ballet conductors'. His inspired conducting was always a highlight of the Kirov Ballet's seasons.
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La Bayadère (The Temple Dancer) is a ballet, choreographed by the balletmaster Marius Petipa to the music of Ludwig Minkus. It was first performed by the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg on February 4, 1877.
Petipa opens the Entrée de l'ombres (Entrance of the Shades) with a single, two-phrase theme in adagio tempo (arabesque cambré port de bras), repeated over and over until all the dancers have filed onto the stage. Then, at the same tempo, with the dancers facing us in columns, he produces a set of mild variations, expanding the profile of the opening image from two dimensions to three. Diagonals are firmly expressed.
The choreography is considered to be the first expression of grand scale symphonism in dance, predating by seventeen years Ivanov's masterly designs for the definitive Swan Lake.
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"The most celebrated and enduring passage of La Bayadère was Petipa's grand vision scene known as The Kingdom of the Shades. Petipa staged this scene as a Grand pas classique in the strictest sense of the word, completely devoid of any dramatic action. His simple and academic choreography was to become among his most celebrated compositions, with the Entrée known as the Entrée de l'ombres (Entrance of the Shades) becoming perhaps his most celebrated composition of all. The Entrée de l'ombres was inspired by Doré's illustrations for Dante's Paradiso from The Divine Comedy, with each dancer of the thirty two strong Corps de ballet clad in white tutus with veils stretched about their arms. Each of the dancers made her entrance, one by one, down a long winding ramp from upstage right, with a simple Arabesque cambré, followed by an arching of the torso with arm in fifth position, followed by two steps forward. With the last two steps she made room for her sister shade, and the combination would continue thus in a serpentine pattern until the entire corps de ballet had filled the stage in eight rows of four. Then followed simple movements en adage to the end, where the Ballerinas split into two rows and lined opposite sides of the stage in preparation for the following dances. Petipa left the Entrée de l'ombres free of technical complexity-the unison of the whole and the effect of the descending Ballerinas was the challenge, as a mistake from one dancer would spoil the effect."
From: en.wikipedia.or...
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Enjoy with Dionysian abandon!!
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[@JamesBond-lq2wt]

With extra heavy breathing....