The Boston Ballet's production of La Bayadaere by Marius Petipa is a lavish and extravagant affair, a simple story whose execution is anything but. A grandiose and energetic performance, the story is easy to understand from the mime but is also one of sensitivity and layered emotion.The night begins with a celebration of power. A fakir played by the powerful but gracefully elastic Altan Dugaraa steps out and performs a ritual dance around a growing fire. The High Brahmin enters, played by the stately Bo Busby, and the temple bayadaeres dance until the most beautiful temple dancer of all comes out to lead: Nikiya, played by the fragile but self-assured Lia Cirio. The High Brahmin falls deeply in love with her and wants his love requited, but Nikiya is already in love with the warrior Solor, played by the magnificent Lasha Khozashvili, and she rejects the Brahmin's advances. She secretly meets with her love afterward, and they share a joyous and enraptured dance in which Solor vows eternal love for Nikiya. However, they are secretly observed by the Brahmin, who vows to take revenge on Solor.

The Rajah, played by Arthur Leech, decides to give Solor the hand of his very beautiful daughter, Gamzatti. Solor, overtaken by lust for Gamzatti, played by Kathleen Breen Combs, agrees to marry her but is struck as he remembers has sworn eternal love for Nikiya. Gamzatti also has fallen in love with Solor and tries to bribe Nikiya to leave him. But Nikiya refuses and the two women fight, ending with Nikiya attempting to kill Gamzatti. The story ends tragically with Nikiya being bitten by a poisonous snake, planted in a bouquet of flowers by Gamzatti and the Brahmin. Solor, overwhelmed by grief, falls under the influence of opium and dreams that Nikiya forgives him and they are reunited in the Kingdom of Shades. It is a tragic love story, filled with human emotion and a deep sensitivity to the frailty of love. And unlike most other ballets, which end with a large celebration or marriage, La Bayadaere concludes on a softly melancholic note, in which no character can claim that cordial love has sweetened his or her life.

But it isn't only the pensiveness that defines La Bayadaere. There are incredibly high-stepping and exuberant moments as well as sensual and mesmeric ones. Cirio, a beautiful dancer with long, slim legs and incredible flexibility, performs a variation of Nikiya's final dance with a sensuality and smoothness that combines the quick and confident spirit of Indian dance with the fluidity and grace of traditional ballet. There is also the magnificent Golden Idol, played by the slight but immensely powerful Joseph Gatti. His movements are exact, powerful and weightless. Robotic and wonderfully precise, Gatti was one of the more memorable performers-being covered in reflective gold paint certainly didn't hurt.

The biggest star of the night, however, was principal dancer Khozashvili, who played of the tragic Solor. The stage seemed too small to contain him as his energy bounded across the theater. Though sporting a towering figure and a thicker frame than most of the other male dancers, he vaulted into the air with unearthly ease and landed with barely more than a whisper. He could sip a cup of tea with the amount of time he had in the air after his perfect double cabrioles. Supremely athletic and tremendously graceful, Khozashvili drew the loudest applause, and rightly so. A sensitive actor as well as a beautiful dancer, Khozashvili was the finest bayadaere of the night.

In addition to a finely tuned orchestra, the sets of the scenes were almost performers in themselves. Each curtain raised brought sighs of awe and admiration. The subtle dark undertones of the first scene were first outshined by the glorious red and gold interior of the Rajah's palace, and the chroma were reined in again during Solor's drug-induced dream. The backdrop was as fine-tuned to the story and music of the show as the dancers, and they jelled seamlessly with each other.

A beautiful mélange of grace with emotion, foreign with familiar and subtlety with mime, La Bayadaere is a show that both the newcomer to ballet as well as the connoisseur can enjoy. La Bayadaere is playing at the Boston Opera House until Nov. 14.