Modern Ballet Modern Dance Ballet of Boris Eifman. "Anna Karenina" Music: Pyotr Tchaikovsky Alexandrinsky Imperial Ballet Theatre (established 1756)
Schedule for Modern Dance Ballet of Boris Eifman. "Anna Karenina" Music: Pyotr Tchaikovsky 2022
Composer: Peter Tchaikovsky Set Designer: Vyacheslav Okunev
Orchestra: Symphony Orchestra "Congress"
Boris Eifman’s ballet Anna Karenina is a true burst of inner psychological energy and is amazingly precise in delivering emotional impact upon its viewers. By setting aside all secondary storylines in Leo Tolstoy’s novel, the choreographer focused on the love triangle “Anna – Karenin – Vronsky”.
Using dance language, Boris Eifman in his ballet managed to portray the drama of a woman being reborn. According to the choreographer, it is the love passion, the “basic instinct” which has led the heroine to the breach of the then current norms of social morality, killed motherly love in Anna Karenina and destroyed her inner world. Being so completely consumed and crushed by passion, a woman is ready for any sacrifice.
The choreographer says that his ballet speaks not of previous times but of today: the timeless emotional content of the performance and obvious parallels to reality can’t leave the contemporary viewer indifferent. The brilliant technical mastery of the company’s dancers and Boris Eifman’s astounding choreography present to us in a remarkably impressive way all the aspects and peripeteias of the Tolstoy’s novel.
Act I
The scene opens with Anna Karenina in the heart of her family in St. Petersburg. At a high society ball, Anna meets a dashing young officer Count Vronsky. In the Karenin household there is marital discord. Anna and Vronsky meet again at the horse races, they fall deeply in love. Anna’s life becomes difficult as rumours and gossip starts to spread about the Karenin’s relationship. At a long-awaited assignation passion overcomes the lovers’ rational thoughts. After a confrontation with Karenin Anna is overcome with dark thoughts foreboding. The married couple makes a reconciliation.
Act II
Vronsky is at his officers club. Following a meeting at the Karenins` home. Anna leaves her husband. At a Carnival in Venice. The affection between Anna and Vronsky begins to break down In St. Petersburg high society turns its back on Anna. She becomes shunned and isolated. In an opium induced state of mind, Anna is in the grip of visions and fantasies. Final despair. Anna’s suicide.
“Eifman has brilliantly distilled the visceral and psychic emotions of love, rejection, loss, passion, guilt, torment, and self-destruction. Anna Karenina, the novel, the play, the novel as ballet, and the novel as inspiration for contemporary theatre, is a love triangle: wife (Anna), husband (Karenin), and wife’s lover (Vronsky). In Eifman’s usual grand scale, no emotions minimized onstage, Anna Karenina as ballet is a masterpiece, a creation that magnetizes the audience through its two angst-filled acts.”
Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower. May 24, 2005
“Forget about all that old-fashioned, frozen-in-amber mime that plagues so many traditional narrative works and often leaves audiences tapping their feet until the ‘real dancing’ begins. Forget, as well, about all the polite nods to tradition and narrative development. With Eifman, you are simply carried away on a tsunami of pure movement. <…> The result is two hours of breathtaking dancing, awash in spectacular duets and trios in which every acrobatic lift and contortion speaks the language of passion and betrayal, dissolution and rejection, appetite and disgust.”
Heidy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times. June 19, 2005
“Anna Karenina is among Eifman's greatest works. The new ballet is relentless in its energy and merciless in its emotional impact.”
Robert Johnson, Star-Ledger. May 26, 2005
“As the curtain came down on Boris Eifman’s evening long ‘Anna Karenina’ the audience rose to its feet and cheered. It was impossible to be surprised. Large numbers of the audience were not just visually pleased by the ballet, although they were that and had a right to be: the costumes were sumptuous, the sets were grand, the dancers were gorgeous.”
Ann Murphy, New York. June 18, 2005
“This production exerts a relentless grip.” “…the production leaves one applauding the Eifman company for its passionate integrity, and Eifman himself for a gift for showmanship.”
Laura Thompson, The Daily Telegraph. April 4, 2012
“Eifman’s style is big, bold and spectacular, with lots of wide-legged lifts and a dramatic dance vocabulary...” “This is dance drama designed for maximum effect.”
Neil Norman, Daily Express. April 4, 2012
“Eifman’s company give a committed, athletic performance. Zmievets is tireless and fearless, from her love duets to a dead fall from a height. Oleg Markov makes a charismatic Karenin, with bold, ardent partnering from Oleg Gabyshev’s Vronsky.”
Zoe Anderson, The Independent. April 4, 2012
Schedule for Modern Dance Ballet of Boris Eifman. "Anna Karenina" Music: Pyotr Tchaikovsky 2022
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