Boris Eifman's The Seagull.

BORIS EIFMAN'S THE SEAGULL CITY CENTER, NYC, APRIL 18-22 REVIEWED BY JOSEPH CARMAN 

Boris Eifman seldom embraces subtlety. His choreographic palette runs in boldly dramatic colors, underscored by themes of tempestuous conflicts and Russian passion. Chekhov's The Seagull concerns itself with the internal lives of theater artists, while Eifman's balletic version, set to excerpts from Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, pushes for the external exhibition of histrionics. This worked well in pieces like Tchaikovsky, but Chekhov's dialogue doesn't survive as a translation into the physical equivalent of nonstop chattering.

Setting the piece in a present-day ballet hall, rather than a 19th-century country estate, Eifman switches the characters from writers and actors to choreographers and dancers. Trigorin is the established choreographer and Arkadina his ballerina and lover, while the tortured avant-garde wannabe Treplev (Arkadina's son) has a romance with the novice ballerina Zarechnaya. The action begins with Treplev dancing in a pipe-like cage, in which, by the end of the ballet, he is still entrapped. The young choreographer can never get a grip on a breakout form of choreography (one attempt at a fabric-encased ensemble looks like a bad Alwin Nikolais send-up).

Ultimately, the Chekhov play is about relationships, and Eifman's best choreography does not materialize in the bland group numbers, but instead arrives in the acrobatic duets that Eifman concocts for the dancers. When they soar in the air or get jackknifed into startling positions, they actually elicit the type of emotional response that even viewers outside the Eifman camp can appreciate. What is ironic is that Eifman, in his Treplev-like attempt b find new ways of expression in ballet, really upholds the best of the old Bolshoi tradition: blood and guts, unapologetically visceral choreography.

Certainly no one can ever fault the Eifman dancers. They perform everything they are given with complete artistic faith. Oleg Markov portrays the stern, confident Trigorin, acting as a foil to the glamorous Natalia Povorozniuk as the diva Arkadina. Oleg Markov easily bounces between melancholy and brash virtuosic movement. Even Anastassia Sitnikova lends class as the stand-in for the seagull, a tutu-clad ballerina who gets shot at by men in a dubious gentleman's club.

Eifman claims to love experimentation. Unfortunately, Chekhov's play, which breaks some rules of traditional stage drama (e.g. no real protagonist), can't serve a choreographer whose real act is to dish up impassioned spectacles with epic plotlines and characters.