Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg.EIFMAN BALLET OF ST. PETERSBURG CITY CENTER, NEW YORK New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , NY MAY 24-29, 2005 The cinematic sweep of Boris Eifman's epic ballets is undeniable; his Red Giselle, Don Quixote, and Russian Hamlet combine psychology with Terpsichore in fast-paced, technically complex productions. This season's offering, Anna Karenina This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details. This article has been tagged since September 2007.
Eifman astutely translates emotion into motion, and the articulate bodies of his long-limbed dancers etch the warped postures indelibly in space and memory. Eifman moves his dancers boldly and, like Martha Graham, has the theatrical instinct to know when the soul-searching duets and trios need a change of pace. Scenes of Anna (Maria Abashova), her staid, doting dote intr.v. dot·ed, dot·ing, dotes To show excessive fondness or love: parents who dote on their only child. [Middle English doten. husband Karenin (Albert Galichanin), and her dashing lover, Vronsky (Yuri Smekalov), who wrestle their emotions and each other, alternate with elegant, rowdy, or gaudy ensemble sections, like the opening party where Anna meets Vronsky amidst a swirling sea of waltzing couples. Musical purists will cringe at Eifinan's cavalier cutting and pasting of music to suit his libretto libretto (ləbrĕt`ō) [Ital.,=little book], the text of an opera or an oratorio. Although a play usually emphasizes an integrated plot, a libretto is most often a loose plot connecting a series of episodes. . It's hard to think of a composer so well suited to this soap-operatic gamut of emotion as Tchaikovsky, and Eifman appropriates themes from Serenade serenade [Ital. sera=evening], term used to designate several types of musical composition. Opera and song literature yield numerous examples of the serenade sung or played by a lover at night beneath his beloved's window; outstanding is for Strings to Sleeping Beauty Sleeping Beauty sleeps for 100 years. [Fr. Fairy Tale, The Sleeping Beauty] See : Enchantment Sleeping Beauty enchanted heroine awakened from century of slumber by prince’s kiss. , as well as some eerie electronics to drive Karenina's tragic journey through infidelity and degradation, which ends in her suicide. Zinovy Margolin's lavish, animated sets fly up and down and glide on and off, moving from ballroom to bedroom. Slava Okunev dresses the rail-slim dancers in flowing skirts, beautifully tailored trousers and coats, and richly detailed bodices, mostly in lush gray tones. And Gleb Filshtinsky's spectacular lighting sweeps between scenes with dynamic cross fades, pinpoint spotlights, and stroboscopic effects that heighten the drama. Eifman's ballets may be emotionally over the top for American audiences--his legions of Russian-American fans at City Center notwithstanding--but his endless invention of passion-laden, contemporary ballet Contemporary ballet is a form of dance influenced by both classical ballet and modern dance. It takes its technique and use of pointework from classical ballet, although it permits a greater range of movement that may not adhere to the strict body lines set forth by schools of movement and the total physical commitment of his gorgeous dancers (especially lanky Galichanin and hyperflexible Abashova) deserve serious consideration. For more information: www.ardani.com/eb.htm |
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