Dance maestro a magician of the theater
Print Edition
RUSSIAN choreographer Boris Eifman is described as a magician and philosopher of the theater, a man with a natural instinct to interpret emotions using the language of ballet. He also has a clear understanding about how to create fateful and complex characters.
“I wasn’t born into a family of dancers. My parents’ professions are not related to art at all, but I seemed to have the instinct for conveying emotions using body and movement when I was young,” Eifman said.
Eifman was born in Siberia in 1946 and choreographed for the first time at age 13 while studying at dance school. Three years later he established an amateur dance group with friends who shared a common goal.
A graduate of Leningrad Conservatory, he founded Eifman Ballet of St Petersburg at the age of 30, the only individually managed theater in Russia and one which is developing an original modern ballet style in Russia.
“For me, choreography is not simply a profession, but the meaning of my existence and my destiny. If I can’t express my feelings using my body, I wouldn’t know how to free my emotions,” he said.
Eifman strives to present the extreme states of the human mind, using ballet as a tool to discuss questions of spiritual and philosophical life.
The Eifman company’s repertoire includes contemporary ballet productions such as “Requiem,” “Tchaikovsky,” “I, Don Quixote,” “Red Giselle,” “Anna Karenina,” “The Seagull,” “Onegin” and the most recent, “Rodin.”
Eifman is known for his theatrical choreographies based on literature works, especially Russian, to create his own new language that interweaves classical ballet, modern dance and other stagecrafts.
“I think the advantage of adapting productions from literature is that the audience already has a certain understanding of the story, I don’t have to go into details over the plotline,” Eifman explained. “The essence of Russian literature is about revealing the morality of human nature, and my choreography has always been centered on humanity, I focus on presenting unwritten emotions using dance.”
Eifman is bringing his company’s production of “Anna Karenina,” adapted from Leo Tolstoy’s novel, to Shanghai Oriental Art Center for the first time next Friday and Saturday.
The critically-acclaimed ballet was first premiered in 2005. Eifman cut out the counterplot lines of the novel to focus instead on the love triangle. The Anna Karenina in his choreography is a woman who’s absorbed and consumed by passion and ready to sacrifice everything.
“The novel has a very important place in my heart. Long before Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung’s psychoanalytic theory, Tolstoy had already written an example of it in this novel. He not only discussed profound and abstruse philosophical and moral questions, but also dissected the psychology of women’s emotional dependence with men,” Eifman said.
The ballet is about the present, not the past, he added. The tragedy of Anna’s character is the struggle between sense and sensibility, responsibility and passion, conscience and desire as well as the dark and destructive side of the soul.
“Modern women also face the choice of individual happiness and happiness of loved ones, making the choice between bodily passions and social moral norms. Readers and audiences of every era can see clearly the conflicts in Tolstoy’s writing, so in this ballet. We unfold the devastated and fragmented soul of Anna Karenina through stage presentation,” he said.
Eifman uses Tchaikovsky’s music for “Anna Karenina.” “My choreography process is similar to film or theater composition,” he said.
“I first establish a leading idea and then spend a lot of time listening to hundreds of pieces of music to find the right match,” he said.
“My experience at the Leningrad Conservatory allowed me to have an understanding of composers and works from different periods, though I often use Tchaikovsky’s music in my works. But I would use Russian rock music if needed,” he said.
Performance schedule:
November 13, 7:15 pm
November 14, 2 pm
November 15, 7:15 pm
Tickets: 80-1280 yuan
Venue: Shanghai Oriental Art Center
Address: 425 Dingxiang Rd
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
