La Bayadère belongs to that stable of antique ballets whose convoluted plots and rusty worldviews combine with pockets of sublime choreography. What distinguishes this 19th-century Orientalist melodrama is how deep those pockets run and how especially offensive—colonialist, racist, the wrong kind of escapist—the story is. But artistic directors who even recognize the problem tend to merely blur the picture rather than change it. Not the Dutch National Ballet’s team of choreographers and researchers. “The new production,” the company asserts, “is based on fact rather than fiction.” Facts close to home, no less. The setting is Fort Sadras, in southeast India, which the Dutch established in the 1600s. The characters, researcher Priya Srinivasan explains, “are based on real people from the time of the Dutch East India Company,” before the British dominated. The libretto is thus thoroughly revised. And the choreography? Associate artistic director Rachel Beaujean, who successfully revised the Dutch National Ballet’s Paquita and Raymonda, admits that the wicked Dutch Colonel who replaces the erstwhile Rajah will need new steps. But Petipa’s undying “Kingdom of the Shades” remains untouched. —Apollinaire Scherr