The Eifman Ballet comes to the London Coliseum Tuesday 3rd April – Saturday 7th April 2012 with four performances of two UK premières.
Acclaimed as Russia’s greatest living choreographer, Boris Eifman presents in Britain for the first time two of his master works:
Anna Karenina – Eifman’s award winning ballet tells the tale of Tolstoy’s famous literary figure with a visceral energy that makes this production unforgettable. He questions is it more important to preserve an illusion of harmony between duties and emotions, or yield to true passions?
Onegin – the compelling classic Russian romance, a heartbreaking tale of infatuation, passion and intrigue.
Taken from Russia’s great literary masterpieces by Leo Tolstoy and Alexander Pushkin. These classics are made into modern dramatic dance dramas by Boris Eifman, a master of theatre as well as a superb maker of dances, and set to the music of Russia’s foremost composer P. I.Tchaikovsky with the added fusion of A.Sitkovetsky’s contemporary rock music in Onegin.
Performed by the superb Eifman Ballet based in Russia’s great city St. Petersburg on their first visit to the London Coliseum.
Eifman Ballet Company website: www.eifmanballet.ru
LISTING:
The Eifman Ballet
London Coliseum
St. Martin’s Lane, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4ES
Book by telephone: 0871 911 0200
www.eno.org
Anna Karenina April 3,4, at 7.30
Onegin April 6,7 at 7.30
Tickets from £5 – £55
The ballet Anna Karenina (premiered in 2005, revised 2010), with music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, is filled with internal psychological energy and is surprisingly incisive in its emotional impact. Discarding all the secondary plot lines of Leo Tolstoy’s novel, the choreographer has focused on the Anna-Karenin-Vronsky love triangle. The drama of the reborn woman is conveyed by the choreographer through the plastique of the body.
According to Eifman, this is a show about the present day, not the past: timeless emotions and direct parallels with reality will grab the attention of modern viewers
Onegin (premiered in 2009, revised 2010) is a two-act choreographed adaptation of the novel Eugene Onegin. Preserving the poetics and the philosophy of Pushkin’s work, Boris Eifman’s new ballet allows us to see the famous tale through modern eyes.
Boris Eifman said: “I try to understand the secrets of the Russian soul in all of my art. Basing a ballet on Eugene Onegin is yet another attempt to reflect the enigma of the Russian spirit. I transported Pushkin’s characters to our times, placing them in new circumstances, more dramatic, even extreme, when the old world is collapsing and life dictates new rules. I needed that experiment to answer the question that troubles me: what is the Russian soul today? Which parts of Pushkin’s ‘encyclopaedia of Russian life’ are a sign of the times, and which parts have come to symbolise the fate of many generations of my fellow citizens?”
Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s score combined with the rock music of composer Alexander Sitkovetsky provides the viewer with a deeper insight into the author’s intentions.
Principal dancers appearing include:
Maria Abashova, Lyubov Andreeva, Zlata Yalinich, Ekaterina Zhigalova, Nina Zmievets, Dmitry Fisher, Oleg Gabyshev, Yury Kovalev, Oleg Markov, Alexei Turko, Nikolai Radziush, Sergey Volobuev.
It’s very disappointing that there is no matinee of either production.