Modern Ballet Modern Dance Ballet of Boris Eifman. Don Quixot or imaginations of the madman Modern Dance Ballet of Boris Eifman
Schedule for Modern Dance Ballet of Boris Eifman. Don Quixot or imaginations of the madman 2022
Composer: Ludwig Minkus Set Designer: Vyacheslav Okunev Choreography: Boris Eifman Costume Designer: Vyacheslav Okunev
Choreography: Boris Eifman Music: Ludwig Minkus Scenery
and Costume Designer: Vyacheslav Okunev
Premiered on 25 June 1994
Boris Eifman's ballet «Don Quixote or Fantasies of a Madman» is absolutely
new reconsideration of world famous classical ballet of the past. Having kept
the musical score, the choreographer creates original vision of an axiomatic
drama plot, escaping from frameworks of archaic forms.
Eifman's hero the
imaginations creates life full of beauty and harmony, pleasure and love. The
world of illusions – is sated and light, but at contact with a bitter and gloomy
reality, threatens to turn back tragedy.
‘We are living under the debris of our own illusions. In his dreams, man
creates the plot of his life, but the meeting of fantasy and reality produces a
tragic effect. I have taken on this ballet because I saw in it the
possibility to combine an eternal, abiding beauty which people need so much with
modern-day reality.
In the new ballet, Don Quixote is one of the patients
in a lunatic asylum, and this is not by chance: the play is modelled on real
life. An ill man imagines himself to be Don Quixote and tries to be kind,
caring, and loving towards other people – but is such an attempt a symptom of a
mental disability?
If it is, then long live the madman's fantasy which
allows him, albeit in a dream, to build a harmonious world which is able to
transcend the mundane inertia of being and to challenge the power of evil
engulfing humankind.’
Libretto
ACT ONE Weird and pitiful inmates of a mad-house. Among
them, a crazy dreamer who thinks he is Don Quixote, a Spanish knight. He
inspires his fellow inmates with his daydreams of the beauties of
Spain.
The Doctor's merciless whistle breaks into the dreamer's colorful
world, destroying it. The harsh reality is now cramped into dimensions of a
metal circle. But the work of imagination cannot be stopped. One step... and
the patients are already in the sunny Barcelona. Here the madman's dreams
acquire real form – in the shape of the charming Kitri who is about to be forced
into marriage with a rich nobleman Gamache by her father, Lorenzo, the
tavern-owner. The dreamer is determined to thwart Lorenzo's greedy plans. His
imagination has no bounds; he transforms into the handsome Basil, a rival to the
rich Gamache.
Again the Doctor's hateful whistle shrieks, bringing the
crazy dreamer back to the gloomy walls of the mad-house.
At the Doctor's order, the inmates start to play a ball game which bends the
dreamer to its will. The ball transforms into a sinister hallucination and
destroys the fantasies. For a brief moment one can escape from its oppression.
But the whistle will blow again: and there is no escape from the Doctor...
ACT TWO Nights are bizarre in the mad-house. One night,
when the longing for freedom becomes unbearable, the two inmates decide to
escape.
The reality of a modern urban life: here morals are tough and
cruel. The naive dreamer interferes into a street fight and saves a young girl
from attack. The mob mocks at him, making fun of his noble gesture. And in the
girl, whose honor he has saved, the dreamer sees the beautiful Dulcinea-Kitri.
He takes her into the world of his fantasy where even the most improbably bold
dreams become true...
Barcelona. Lorenzo and Gamache appear. Lorenzo
insists that his daughter marry the rich nobleman. Basil pretends to commit
suicide. But he immediately comes to life when Don Quixote manages to persuade
the tavern-owner to give his blessing to the young couple's marriage. Wedding
festivities. Don Quixote announces a tournament in honor of beauty and
love...
Reality is pitiless; it has come a full circle: it is sad to
return into ‘the cloister of madness’. But the world created by the dreamer's
imagination is eternal.
from St.-Petersburg State Academic Ballet Theatre of Boris
Eifman
Schedule for Modern Dance Ballet of Boris Eifman. Don Quixot or imaginations of the madman 2022
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