The Directorate of the International Platonov Arts Festival presents the tour of St. Petersburg Eifman Ballet in Voronezh. On April 7th and 8th, 2023, on the stage of the Opera and Ballet Theatre, the company will show Boris Eifman's ballet "Anna Karenina" to the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy. The collective will perform in Voronezh for the first time since 1989.
Boris Eifman is the creator of his own theatre, his own style, and his own ballet universe. Critics call him one of the world's leading choreographers and "an amazing theatrical wizard". A recognisable stylistic feature of Boris Eifman's choreography is that most of his performances have a plot, and often a literary source. A vivid example is the ballet "Anna Karenina", which has already become legendary and has toured many countries.
In his performance, Boris Eifman removes the secondary lines of Tolstoy's novel, focusing on the love triangle "Anna – Karenin – Vronsky". The choreographer portrays the drama of "a woman being reborn". According to Boris Eifman, it was love passion that led to a crime against social norms and destroyed the inner world of Anna Karenina. Unable to resist sensual attraction, she is ready to make any sacrifice.
As Boris Eifman notes, his ballet is not about a past era, but about today: the emotional content of the performance and parallels with modern reality cannot leave the audience indifferent. "The novel Anna Karenina has always interested me," the choreographer admits. – "When you read Tolstoy, you feel the author's incredible understanding of the psychological world of his characters, the amazing sensitivity and accuracy of reflecting the life of Russia. In the novel "Anna Karenina" there is not only an immersion in the psychological world of the heroine, but also a real psychoerotic understanding of her personality. Even in today's literature we will not find such passions, metamorphoses, phantasmagories. All this became the essence of my choreographic reflections."
Set designer Zinovy Margolin, costume designer Vyacheslav Okunev and lighting designer Gleb Filshtinsky worked on the stage design of the performance.
Tickets to the performance "Anna Karenina" by St. Petersburg Eifman Ballet will be available from December 23rd on the website platonovfest.com, at the ticket offices of the Opera and Ballet Theatre and the Voronezh Concert Hall, as well as at the ticket offices and on the website of the ticket partner of the festival – kassir.ru. Spectators from 14 to 22 years old will be able to pay for the purchase with the Pushkin Card.
Boris Eifman is a Soviet and Russian choreographer, artistic director of St. Petersburg Eifman Ballet, founder and president of the Boris Eifman Dance Academy (St. Petersburg). He graduated from the ballet master department of the Leningrad State Conservatory named after N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov. He worked as a choreographer at the Leningrad School of Choreography (now the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet). He staged performances to the music of Igor Stravinsky, Rodion Shchedrin, Vasily Kalinnikov, Imants Kalniņš, which were presented on the stage of the Leningrad State Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre.
In 1977 he created St. Petersburg Eifman Ballet (originally called the Leningrad New Ballet). The company was designed as an authentic project, an experimental laboratory of one choreographer. In his productions, Boris Eifman explores the problems of modernity, the secrets of creativity and the human soul. The genre in which he works is defined by the choreographer himself as "psychological ballet". Eifman Ballet has toured the countries of North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, presenting their performances of "Red Giselle", "Russian Hamlet", "Anna Karenina", "Eugene Onegin", "Rodin, Her Eternal Idol", " Beyond Sin", "Requiem", "Up & Down", "Tchaikovsky. PRO et CONTRA", "The Pygmalion Effect", "Molière Passion, or The Mask of Don Juan", "The Seagull. A Ballet Story."
Boris Eifman – People’s Artist of Russia, the Laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation, the laureate of the Golden Mask and the Golden Soffit awards, the holder of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, the holder of the Order of Honor, an officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters, the holder of honorary awards of Armenia, Moldova, Poland.