Tell Tchaikovsky the news: choreographer Boris Eifman talks about Tchaikovsky: the Mystery of Life and Death, his ballet about the composer's tortured sexuality. (dance).

The evidence that Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky was gay has long been recognized among musicologists. But even though, nearly 110 years after his death, Tchaikovsky's ballets are more popular than ever--Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker come to mind--the ballet world has tended to ignore the composer's sexuality. That is, until Russian choreographer Boris Eifman tackled the issue head-on in his full-evening ballet Tchaikovsky: The Mystery of Life and Death.

"Tchaikovsky was not gay as a hobby. This was his nature," says Eifman, who has headed his own avant-garde company, the Eifman Ballet, since 1977. "But he was a religious man and was conflicted about his actions." Using Tchaikovsky's music, Eifman's ballet evokes the composer's sexual anguish; homoerotic duets between the protagonist and another dancer represent the artist's inner desires.

Tchaikovsky was a box office hit in its 1998 U.S. debut. Now Americans are getting a second look as the ballet tours nationally, culminating with a May 16-18 engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, Calif.

"Tchaikovsky is one of my favorite heroes," Eifman says. And although Eifman is not gay, it's easy to see why he might relate to the composer's struggles with repression. Eifman hails from Siberia, which, under the Soviet Union, officially denied the very existence of homosexuality.

When the ballet premiered in St. Petersburg in 1993, the Russian public resisted the notion of Tchaikovsky's homosexuality. "I got lots of threatening mail," says Eifman. "At the debut, there were a lot of protesters with signs that said STAY AWAY FROM OUR TCHAIKOVSKY."

Like the music of its title character, Tchaikovsky: The Mystery of Life and Death is wildly dramatic. In one sequence Tchaikovsky's crazed wife, Antonina Milyukova, appears in his nightmare as the Queen of Spades to deliver his death sentence. In another scene Tchaikovsky's sexy alter ego, clad in a jockstrap, cavorts with a handsome prince while the composer weeps.

Such risk-taking has made Eifman's the most commercially successful Russian troupe other than the Bolshoi and Kirov ballets. Indeed, his newest ballet is now making waves in New York. Who's Who concerns two male Russian ballet dancers who immigrate to America after the 1917 revolution. Chased by gangsters, they find refuge disguised as chorus girls in a nightclub. Sound like some unholy mix of Swan Lake and Some Like It Hot? That's the idea. "I believe the future of dance is a combination of theater and ballet," Eifman says. "I think more and more people are into it."

Carman also writes for The New York Times.