The ballet "Anna Karenina" (B. Eifman Ballet Theatre) will be shown at the Alexandrinsky Theatre

 The premiere took place on March 31, 2005, and immediately after the premiere it became clear that this was the pinnacle of Eifman and his ballet troupe's work. The Russian stage had never seen such deep psychologism in dance. All the nerves are exposed, all the feelings are heightened, and the most complex evolution of the three main characters of Leo Tolstoy's novel - Anna, Vronsky and Karenin - comes under the magnifying glass of the audience's attention. According to the choreographer, it was passion that led to the crime against social norms, destroyed maternal love and ruined Anna Karenina's inner world. This is what Eifman told in the language of dance, music, light and shadow.

Literature occupies a special place in the choreographer's artistic philosophy. Eifman repeatedly turned to domestic and foreign immortal novels of the classics. His Chekhov's "The Seagull" conquered all world stages, ballets based on the books by Fyodor Dostoevsky became a stunning revelation for all fans of ballet. Eifman created productions based on the novels of Zola, Bulgakov, Pushkin, and other writers. And each time the choreographer is interested not so much in the literal plot of the work, but in the psychology, changes in the heroes, their inner world, which is revealed in the language of the body. 

The ballet based on "Anna Karenina" is not new. The audience has already seen the three-act performance by Maya Plisetskaya, staged by Rodion Shedrin at the Moscow Bolshoi Theater, successfully combining plot narration with metaphorical generalization. And then there was the heart-rending Anna Karenina by Andrei Prokovsky to the music of P. I. Tchaikovsky at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1993, in which everything that Tolstoy told in the titanic volume of the novel was tediously but thoroughly laid out according to the plot. There was a sea of ​​props, which eventually obscured the choreography of the ballet itself. Eifman did everything so in his own way that it became a new word in the production of Karenina. There is a minimum of props, a stunning play of light, and even the locomotive is embodied by the dancers themselves. The only thing that has remained unchanged is the magnificent music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, which is stunning in its beauty, as is the dance of the theater artists.

Tickets for the ballet "Anna Karenina" by Boris Eifman at the Alexandrinsky Theater are an opportunity to read a book you've known since school in a new way, to rethink much of what seems so familiar.