GOVERNMENT OF ST. PETERSBURG
COMMITTEE FOR CULTURE
EIFMAN BALLET
As part of a big North American tour Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg
is going to bring a performance about the Jazz Age to the United States
St. Petersburg Eifman Ballet company is preparing to start a big tour in Canada and the
United States that will take place from April 15 to June 14, 2015. In April, the Company will
perform in Montreal, Toronto, and Minneapolis. In May, Eifman Ballet will visit Boston, Chicago,
New York, Washington, and in June – Costa Mesa and Los Angeles. The upcoming tour is going to
be the longest North American tour of the St. Petersburg company in its history.
As part of the Canadian leg of the tour Eifman Ballet, for the first time in the Land of the Maple
Leaf, will present the internationally acclaimed ballet Anna Karenina. The American audience will see
ballets Rodin and Up & Down – the premiere of 2015.
The ballet about the great French sculptor enjoyed immense success in the USA during the previous
North American tour of the Company in spring 2013. ‘Of the ballet choreographers making narrative
works for major stages, Russian Romantic Boris Eifman is virtually the only one totally in touch with the
21st century… Eifman outpaces the zeitgeist,’ Los Angeles Times wrote then. This year Rodin will be
presented in Minneapolis, Boston, Washington, and Los Angeles – the cities where the ballet has not been
performed yet.
The highlight of the tour program will be the American premiere of Up & Down. The new ballet by
Boris Eifman plunges audience into the atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties. It premiered in Saint
Petersburg in January, 2015. In February, the ballet was triumphantly presented at the Théâtre des
Champs Elysées in Paris, as well as in Bratislava. The spectators of Riga saw Up & Down in March. ‘The
Russian company bringing the ballet about the Jazz Age to the USA is an extraordinary event. I believe
that the ballet ‘Up & Down’, very well received by European audience, will find its way into the hearts of
American dance fans, who genuinely love and know the art of our theatre,’ Boris Eifman says. The ballet
of the Saint Petersburg choreographer will be premiered in Chicago, New York and Costa Mesa.
Eifman Ballet will perform at the iconic venues of North America. In particular, in Montreal, the
Saint Petersburg Company will be received at Place des Arts – the largest cultural complex in Canada.
The American leg of the tour will be held at New York City Center, the Segerstrom Center for the Arts
(Costa Mesa), The Music Center (Los Angeles), and other well-known venues that are recognized as
‘places of power’ of contemporary artistic life.
The promoter of the North American tour of Eifman Ballet is Ardani Artists Management – a longterm partner of the Company, celebrating its 25th Anniversary in the 2014-2015 season.
The full schedule of the St. Petersburg Eifman Ballet’s tour in Canada and the United States:
http://eifmanballet.com/en/schedule/2015/04
Eifman Ballet thanks VTB, the General Sponsor of the production of Up & Down
About the productions
Anna Karenina
Set in 2005 to the music of Tchaikovsky this ballet is one of the most successful productions in
Eifman Ballet’s repertoire. It has been performed to critical and public acclaim in Russia, USA, Australia,
UK, Germany, Holland, Spain, France and many other countries. In his Anna Karenina Boris Eifman
focuses on the Anna/Karenin/Vronsky love triangle and creates a brilliant example of a theatrical form of
psychoanalysis showing the terrible inner struggle between love and lust that’s experienced by the central
character.
‘In the ‘Anna Karenina’ novel one will find a plunge into the psychological world of the chief
character and also a psycho-erotic interpretation of her personality. For me Anna was sort of a ‘shape
shifter’ because two persons lived within her: externally she was a high society lady known to her
husband Karenin, to her son and to everyone around. The other one was a woman immersed into the
world of passions,’ Boris Eifman says.
Rodin
The premiere was held in St Petersburg in 2011. The ballet is set to music by 19th century French
composers Jules Massenet, Maurice Ravel, and Camille Saint-Saёns and is dedicated to the creative work
and fate of the great sculptors Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel, Rodin’s student, lover, and muse. The
production was presented with a great success at the major venues of New York, Paris, London, Moscow,
Budapest, Athens, Prague and of many other cities.
Margaret Willis from Bachtrack says: ‘The French artist, Auguste Rodin sculpted with clay.
Russian choreographer, Boris Eifman sculpts with bodies. Both are master craftsmen at their art and
their differing styles have similarly produced memorable images of beauty and brilliance.’
Hedy Weiss from the Chicago Sun-Times describes Rodin as ‘audacious, inventive and stunningly
beautiful’ production.
Up & Down
This new ballet by Boris Eifman set to the music by George Gershwin, Franz Schubert and Alban
Berg is the quintessence of the choreographer’s psychoanalytic research. The semantic space of the
performance encompassed between two oppositely directed vectors of the plot (the degradation of the
talented young doctor and the ascension of his wife and patient), is turned into a field for surrealistic
experiments. Eifman depicts the disintegration of characters’ consciousness, bringing their nightmares
and delusions to the surface.
The characters’ ups and downs take place in the magnificent Jazz Age – the unstoppable feast of
life; the era of freedom, sensuality, and hedonism, masterfully recreated by Boris Eifman and his dancers.
The production was highly appreciated by Ariane Bavelier from Le Figaro. ‘Dance is a jewel,
expressive and delicate, playing with the classics and Charleston; artists are handsome, beautiful and
well-proportional like supermodels,’ states the dance critic.
Graham Watts, Chairman of Critics' Circle Dance Section in the UK, who attended one of the
St. Petersburg performances of Up & Down says about Boris Eifman: ‘There is no better story-telling
choreographer around today. His ballets will work in France and America, just as well as they do in
Russia (where Eifman is revered).’
Boris Eifman on his recent production: ‘The ballet ‘Up & Down’ is a tragic and bright chronicle of
a person’s spiritual death. The story about how a dream of happiness turns into a disaster, and an
externally beautiful and carefree life flowing to the rhythms of jazz – into a nightmare.’
You can download the HD images of Eifman Ballet’s Anna Karenina, Rodin and Up & Down
via the following link: http://goo.gl/sI1Ag8