From Russia with style
TRANSFORMED seven years ago by choreographer Boris Eifman into a contemporary ballet, Leo Tolstoy’s epic 1877 tragedy Anna Karenina will take to the Australian stage this month.
The Russian saga, distilled by Eifman into a two-hour psychological thriller, takes on new force in a production that is heady, emotional and technically rigorous.
It marks Eifman’s debut in Australia and will be performed alongside Tchaikovsky, a ballet in two acts, in a season that begins in Sydney on August 15 and in Melbourne on August 29.
Born in postwar Siberia, Eifman defied his Jewish parents’ career ambitions, instead graduating as a dancer from St Petersburg’s Vaganova Ballet Academy, before cutting his teeth in choreography at the Leningrad Conservatory (now St Petersburg Conservatory).
“We all think that psychoanalysis owes its existence to the works of Sigmund Freud, but in reality it is Tolstoy who has been the first psychoanalyst – in his novel Anna Karenina, he was surprisingly precise,” says Eifman, whose troupe has braved Russia’s political climate since its inception in the late ’70s.
Attracting international attentional and local Soviet-era disapproval, Eifman soon became a feted artist, developing a new ballet in Russia and presenting almost 30 productions within the first decade of the company’s life.
“Each of my productions is not a preaching, but a confession; the dialogue not only with the audience, but also with myself,” says Eifman of his starkly honest work.
“Ballet is neither religion nor ideology or philosophic system. It doesn’t impose on a person the certain way of thinking and doesn’t teach us how to live and react to this or that life situation … on the other hand, every creative act is the union – with the world, with the past and the present, with the people around me that approve or disapprove of my works.”
The 50-member Eifman Ballet is touring Australia for the first time.
The Eifman Ballet stages Anna Karenina at the Capitol Theatre, Sydney, from August 15-19 and Tchaikovsky from August 22-26. Anna Karenina is at the Regent Theatre, Melbourne, from August 29 to September 2 and Tchaikovsky from September 5-9. Bookings: www.ticketmaster.com.au.
REPORT by Livia Albeck-Ripka
PHOTO of choreographer Boris Eifman.
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