NEW PRESS REVIEWS:

May 26, 2005 (NY Times)

A Triangle of Sex, Love and Anguish

By JOHN ROCKWELL

Boris Eifman is an acquired taste, at least for non-Russian audiences, and it seems fair to say that a lot of New York dance connoisseurs have not yet acquired it. They express their disdain by boycotting performances of the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg or by complaining about them if they do attend.
As a frequent lover of things Russian and of performances (those of the conductor Valery Gergiev come to mind) that strike more sober-minded sorts as sensationalist, I bring no bias to Mr. Eifman's work. Yes, an Eifman Ballet show I saw a couple of years ago seemed maudlin, and his "Musagète" for the New York City Ballet, a supposed homage to Balanchine (who was Russian in his training and upbringing), looked downright crude.
Still, I went on Tuesday night to see Mr. Eifman's latest work, "Anna Karenina," which plays with alternating casts at City Center for the rest of the week, with an open mind. Although Tolstoy's massive novel, with its plots and subplots and finely shaded characters, might seem a stretch for a two-hour ballet with intermission - other Russians, including Maya Plisetskaya and Aleksei Ratmansky, have taken a crack at it, too - its central grand passions are not unsuited to Mr. Eifman's insistently impassioned sensibility.
For him, above all, there is no Levin, with his tortured introspection about the meaning of life. No Oblonsky. Kitty (here, Kiti) is reduced to a supernumerary to fill out a quartet in the opening ball scene. It's all about the triangle of Anna, her tortured husband, Karenin, and her sexy lover, Vronsky.
That's it, except for several stiff, effortful ball scenes, one a Venetian number right out of "The Phantom of the Opera" but without the curving staircase. Anna's little son is seen playing with a locomotive at the outset and hurling himself into her arms when she's feeling guilty. The locomotive returns at the end of the first act, with falling snow, and again at the very end, with the entire corps playing out a Constructivist ballet version of a steam engine, all clanking and hissing and machinelike movement. Anna throws herself into the melee, not quite between the wheels of a train car as in the novel, but close enough.
Otherwise, though, it's all grand passion, all the time. Anna and Vronsky are instantly smitten and have several steamy sex duets. There are a lot of tricky lifts with extreme extensions. Anna and Karenin are anguished. She has some sort of hellish drug trip (not really the sort of thing one would expect from Tolstoy's Anna's soporific of choice, opium, but never mind).
The recorded music consists of stitched-together bits from Tchaikovsky, fairly cleverly done. It starts with the "Serenade for Strings"; concentrates on the big symphonies and tone poems, the louder the better; passes through some creepy electronic music (Mr. Eifman reportedly had a hand in it); and ends, inevitably, with "Romeo and Juliet."
Mr. Eifman's choreography is not without interest, if too soon repetitive and predictable. (You just know at the end of a gloomy ball scene, in which Society rejects the lovers, that Anna will crumple to the floor.) The dancers are long and leggy, and Anna is costumed (when she isn't metaphorically naked in a unitard) in a series of gorgeous long dresses, which seemed designed to reveal her legs in the lifts all the more. (Slava Okunev did the costumes.)
Tuesday's cast was first-rate, and indefatigable. The dancers may not all have the technique to master Petipa at the highest level, but they master Mr. Eifman just fine, and they'd be good for Maurice Béjart and any number of modern European choreographers as well. Tuesday's principals were Albert Galichanin as Karenin, Yuri Smekalov as Vronsky and the awesomely tireless Maria Abashova as Anna, all commanding and handsome.
But the insistent, unvariegated proclamations of emotion, in the dancing and the music, ultimately drag down Mr. Eifman's good intentions. All that overbearing intensity just becomes wearing after a short while, even if you accept Mr. Eifman's right to transform the novel into a lurid soap opera.
As a Russian defender of Mr. Eifman wrote recently in Dance Magazine, "Good taste is just that, a matter of taste." Not much you can say to that, except that I have not fully managed to wrap my good taste around Mr. Eifman's.
"Anna Karenina" continues through Sunday at City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan; (212) 581-1212.

Ballet three ways

Eifman’s Anna Karenina, ‘Raw Dance,’ Anna Myer
BY MARCIA B. SIEGEL

Boris Eifman’s Anna Karenina had very little to do with Leo Tolstoy’s novel or Peter Tchaikovsky’s music; the real propellant behind it was the self-proclaimed genius of its choreographer. For opening night and evidently the remaining four performances of the ballet at the Cutler Majestic last week by the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg, no house programs were provided. Patrons were told to buy the $15 souvenir book, which enabled them to become amply familiar with Boris Eifman’s philosophy and artistic gifts but left them in the dark about the specific performance and casting.
I do have to say that the ballet was a gorgeous spectacle (sets by Zinovy Margolin, costumes by Slava Okunev, lighting by Gleb Filshtinsky) and a very successful example of through-danced storytelling. Without acknowledging them, Eifman follows his Soviet predecessors, especially Yuri Grigorovich, who perfected the all-dance, evening-length ballet formula more than 40 years ago.
The movement vocabulary is classical — that is, the athletic side of classical: turning, jumping, extensions, preferably taken on the run or multiplied by 12 or 24 dancers doing it at the same time. Every move is pitched at the same keyed-up energy level. The ensembles adopt characteristic gestures or movement traits. In a scene where the principals are ostracized by society, for instance, contemptuous shoulder shrugs, palm shakes, and foot scrapes are embedded in the dancing to create a collective feeling tone without the encumbrance of pantomime. The duets use body contact and distortion — grapplings and twistings, distended limbs and somersaulting lifts, submissive weighted falls — and leaping, pirouettes, pointe work, to convey feelings on a more personal level.

Eifman’s dancers are splendid and extravagantly hardworking. His work is so

accomplished, so lucid, so invested in the splashy popular image of ballet dancing, that the least sophisticated audience can reap its rewards. What more could one want? Well, a lot that falls on the other side of accessibility and immediate ravishment.
Eifman’s Anna Karenina reduces Tolstoy to your basic love triangle. An excruciatingly complex and compassionate study of character, within a sweeping portrait of a society about to topple into modernism, is shrunken to a succession of ever-more-tortured duets. An anonymous corps de ballet represents, variously, the hedonistic society that disapproves of the lovers and the guilty conscience that torments the heroine. Eifman’s sex-crazed Anna (Maria Abashova on opening night), wronged and distraught Karenin (Albert Galichanin), and feckless Vronsky (Yuri Smekalov) can sustain but two emotions: passionate desire and passionate jealousy. Kitty (Natalia Povorozniuk), Vronsky’s girlfriend at the beginning of the ballet, disappears after he and Anna have locked eyes for the first time. Levin, the novel’s honorable humanist and its true hero, has been deleted.
There’s more depth and compassion on any page of Tolstoy than in the whole of Eifman’s ballet. His skeletal drama is a generic romance. With a few more preening males and neurotic, crotch-sprung women, or a few less, it could be Manon Lescaut, or Carmen, or a Joan Crawford movie.
Eifman utilizes the music for his own purposes as well. We do hear unidentified selections from Tchaikovsky’s symphonic works on tape, but they serve primarily as mood music. There are bumptious references to George Balanchine’s ballets. The overture is the section of the Serenade for Strings that Balanchine used for the beginning of Serenade, and the Polonaise that ends the Third Orchestral Suite (known in the Balanchine canon as the last section of Theme and Variations) accompanied one of many party dances. Ignoring the music’s period lilt and flourishes, the dancers caroused in commedia dell’arte masks and costumes. The electronic squeals and fright sounds that accompanied Anna’s nightmares were created by an uncredited composer.
AS A POSTSCRIPT to the season, Boston Ballet’s Gianni Di Marco and Viktor Plotnikov presented a new edition of their Raw Dance workshop at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Cyclorama. The performances give company members a chance to choreograph on their colleagues and to show work in an informal setting. The audience gets to see the dancers up close and in different roles from those it’s accustomed to. Principals let their hair down; corps members take the spotlight. The choreographers this spring, in addition to Di Marco and Plotnikov, were Yuri Yanowsky and Heather Myers.

Viktor Plotnikov accounted for five of the 10 short dances on this program. Both he and Di Marco were working quite consistently to feature the particular abilities of the dancers, with solos and duets that were like character or technical

studies, crammed with steps, events, attitude, and not much in the way of choreographic shaping.
Yanowsky’s duet for Kathleen Breen Combes and Jared Nelson, based on a Pablo Neruda poem, provided glimpses of a country romance but depended mostly on fast, showy partner work. The more intricate group pieces, Plotnikov’s final sextet, a trio by Heather Myers, and a quartet by Di Marco, slid buffoonish comedy and Dadaistic prop play in amid the array of steps.
COMPARED WITH the effusive pyrotechnics of Eifman and most other contemporary dance, Anna Myer’s work is so restrained, it’s almost undetectable. You think you’re looking at something elementary, but it gathers emotional force, through entirely different channels from what were first apparent. Myer and Dancers took over Boston Ballet’s enormous top-floor studio for the weekend while the company members were showing their own choreography around the corner. I used to wonder what Myer might do if invited to make a piece for Boston Ballet, but now I think her sensibility might not be a good fit.
Myer offered the Boston premiere of a big new work, All at Once, to music by Jakov Jakoulov for the five cellos, six violins, and double bass of the New England String Ensemble, which was conducted by Susan Davenny Wyner. Dance audiences get to hear a lot more music than the average theatergoer, but after a season of over-amplified, hissy-taped, electronically adulterated, sampled, chopped-up, and remixed stuff, it was heaven just to hear a serious live composition in a lively space. For each of the four sections, the dancers repositioned the players’ music stands and silver stools, to evoke new sonic textures as well as visual effects.
Besides that, the spatial realignments were choreographed, as grave and formal processions that suggested the music and the dancing were interwoven. Throughout, the five female and four male dancers used a vocabulary of scooping, perching, tilting, turning moves initiated by an arm curved in front of the chest. Most of the time, they were traveling around or among the musicians, but at moments they would freeze in poses on tiptoe, or be held and gently lowered to the floor by a partner.
The movement could have been abstract, but the dissonant third musical section seemed to be pulling the processions into some darker place. I was thinking of a funeral. The music and the dancing grew more agitated. With turns and swiveling arms, falls and gestural exclamations, the dancers drew closer together, their moves became smaller and smaller, until they were clustered in a tight group. The music ended on a scream, and they stood with their arms straight up in the air.

But this wasn’t the end. For the last part, the violinists stood in a semicircle with

Wyner in the center and the dancers developing their thematic material: lifting one another, lying on the floor in comfortable pairs, kneeling at the side to watch the music. Finally they stepped in a scalloping, lunging circle around Wyner, as if she could give them a new direction.
The concert also included a premiere for six women, Bach Deco Suites, to two selections from the Suites for Unaccompanied Cello (the Sarabande from BWV 1012 and the Prelude from BWV 1008) played by Eliza Jacques. The dance felt slight — maybe it’s the first parts of what will be a longer work. The unadorned cello made me aware of how hard it must be to do Myer’s unadorned movement in a musical way. You also notice how she works with this limited vocabulary from one piece to another — the walking, gently scooping arms and upper bodies, strong steady relevés, a few vigorous runs and jumps — and how understated the dancers are about showing it to the audience.

Myer opened the program with her enchanting 1998 Blue Bird, where six dancers and seven small children dance together to ’60s pop songs. The kids hook up with adult partners and they work together, making formal patterns out of the everyday stuff of teaching and learning, playing, resting, hugging. The kids’ part is often quite complicated, and sometimes they even work out a game before the grown-ups do. What they’re doing is choreography after all.

Eifman Ballet tours new "Anna Karenina"

By FREDERICK M. WINSHIP

NEW YORK, May 27 (UPI) - The Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg is making a five-city American tour with performances of an original production of "Anna Karenina" to music by Peter I. Tchaikovsky that illustrates its talent for daring dancing and imaginative treatment of familiar literary material.
Midway in its tour, the Russian company devoted to the choreography of Boris Eifman has been dancing his work based on Leo Tolstoy's tragic novel of passion and adultery at City Center, presenting two alternating casts in the course of seven performances. The full-evening work in two acts is brilliantly realized and a triumph of classic ballet informed by modern dance.
It is no wonder that the Eifman in eight years of touring the United States has replaced the stodgy Kirov and Bolshoi ballet companies as the "must see" Russian ensemble for many ballet fans across the nation. In addition to tour-de-force dancing, it offers sets, costumes, and lighting that are as elaborate and glamorous as those of the larger companies from St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Eifman, 59, has created nearly 50 ballets in a career that began as a choreographer for the Maly and Kirov Ballets. In 1977 he founded the New Ballet of Leningrad but received no state subsidies, as did other ballet companies, and was given no theater to call his own. He persisted by performing in school and hotel auditoriums until he received recognition as the St. Petersburg State Academic Ballet, now known simply as "The Eifman."
Paring the sprawling Tolstoy plot down to four characters - Anna, her husband Karenin, her lover Vronsky, and Vronsky's mistress Kiti, Eifman has discarded sublots and concentrated on the grand passion of Anna for Vronsky that wrecked her marriage, made her a social outcast, and led to her suicide.
Perhaps there are too many steamy Anna-Vronsky duets in the course of the two-hour work, but the choreography given them is so richly diverse that there is never a sense of repetition. When Eifman isn't giving center stage to the smitten couple he is peopling it with 47 other principal dancers and members of the corps de ballet, providing them with dazzling ensemble numbers.
The performance seen by this critic had Maria Abashova, a tall, leggy dancer who can make the most difficult Eifman choreography look effortless, as Anna, Uri Smekalov, a sturdy, handsome dancer of stunning virtuosity, as Vronsky, Albert Galichanin, a dancer of surpassing grace, as Karenin, and Natalia Povorozniuk in the small role of Kiti.
Their dancing was never less than intense or tireless in executing dance movements demanding exceptional physical exertion and tricky technical prowess that are unique to Eifman's choreography and more related to modern dance than to ballet.
The big scenes in "Anna Karenina" also are unforgettable, especially as Renaissance masked ball that filled the stage with glittering, fantastic costumes, a scene in a Vronsky's hard-drinking military officer's club, a vignette involving street toughs, and the transformation of the corps de ballet into a collective steam engine under which the desperately unhappy Anna throws herself.
The means of her suicide is hinted at in the very first scene of the ballet, showing Anna's little son playing with a toy locomotive, and again at the end of the first act showing the tiny locomotive circling Anna in the falling snow.
Dramatic touches such as these reveal Eifman's genius for theatrical effects, especially telling when matched to some of the greatest musical themes ever written by Tchaikovsky spliced together with some original electronic music. The taped score is magnificent but much too loudly amplified even for the cavernous City Center theater.
Zinovy Margolin has created an all-purpose set that is a strange but effective blend of Czarist and Art Deco design. Slava Okunev has provided a wide range of costumes, including some slim, silvery-gray evening gowns for the opening ballroom scene that are drop-dead chic. And Gelb Filshtinsky's lighting can only be described as magical.

Friday, October 7, 2005

'Sleeping Beauty' refreshed

Review: Ballerina Diana Vishneva's passion for performance reawakens this 1890 work.
By LAURA BLEIBERG
The Orange County Register
ENLIVENED: The Kirov Ballet’s costumes and sets are tired, but “The Sleeping
Beauty” outshone these weaknesses.

THE KIROV BALLET
What “The Sleeping Beauty”
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When Oct. 5
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Where Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center of Los Angeles County
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Continues Through Sunday, Oct. 9
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Tickets (714) 740-7878 or www.musiccenter.org

The Kirov Ballet's 1952 staging of "The Sleeping Beauty" is a choreographically
lush, if scenically shopworn, fairytale ballet with the proverbial cast of
thousands waltzing, promenading and hopping on pointes for more than 3-1/2
hours.

Wednesday night at the Los Angeles Music Center, where the company performs the
Marius Petipa-Pyotor Tchaikovsky ballet through Sunday, it was ballerina Diana
Vishneva as Aurora who owned the spotlight - and well-deservedly.

Vishneva raised goose bumps with a stunningly lovely performance of the Rose
Adagio in the first act. If there has been a more perfect rendition of this
famous scene done here, Vishneva obliterated any memory of it Wednesday night.
She managed to be simultaneously coltish and sassy, humble and glamorous. She
inhabits a role with the pure joy she gets from dancing it, and that is the
souvenir this viewer will long recall.

Her portrayal increased in intensity as the scene progressed, and she fueled
herself with the encouragement of the Kirov Orchestra and conductor Boris
Bruzin, and the enthusiasm of her fellow dancers.

As the exuberant 16-year-old princess, she attacked the ballet's ultimate tests
of balance and strength with astonishing ease and gorgeous placement, and
concluded with energetic leaps of happiness. The orchestra's percussion and
horns trembled in anticipation of the final poses, just as Vishneva reached her
own kinetic crescendo. A hair-raising moment. In Vishneva's accomplished hands,
classical dance is no stultified antique art form, but a crackling expression of
any audience's dreams.

There can be a downside to such artistic sensitivity, though, and minor
partnering difficulties temporarily knocked her off stride later on. The
ballet's Prince Desire on Wednesday was Igor Zelensky, normally a steadfast
partner. On this night, however, Zelensky had trouble centering Vishneva on toe;
the role calls for Prince Desire to support Aurora repeatedly with a single
hand. As Zelensky circled about the poised Vishneva, she wavered uncomfortably.
During an overhead lift, Zelensky's arms shook and he lowered her prematurely.

These gaffes became noticeable, in light of the resplendent earlier moments,
though they were certainly not ruinous.

While the public may identify "Swan Lake" as the ultimate ballet, the company
demonstrated a particular pride of ownership in "Sleeping Beauty," which was
Tchaikovksy's first collaboration with Petipa, the French-born ballet master who
defined Russian classical dance.

Though much has been added to and subtracted from "The Sleeping Beauty" since
its 1890 premiere, this production, staged by former director Konstantin
Sergeev, still entertained and satisfied. It includes variations that other
companies have long since cut - mischievous boys chased by an ogre - and the
orchestra still plays the exquisite overture Tchaikovsky wrote to separate the
Vision scene from the Prince's kiss. (Yuri Zagorodnyuk was the outstanding
violin soloist.) There were a few empty seats after the third intermission, but
most of the crowd stayed on, as though wondering how it would all turn out.

It turned out fine, mostly. Uliana Lopatkina was Wednesday's Lilac Fairy, and it
was the perfect role for her personality - just the right balance of serenity
and haughtiness. Regal in repose, Lopatkina moves with precision. She glides
smoothly and musically from step to step, always in liquid control.

In his solo variations, Zelensky was still impressive, though the effort to
execute those soaring leaps and clean beats was visible. He finished phrases
with a beautifully finished "Ta da," that was quite princely. And throughout the
last act, he made continuous, comforting eye contact with Vishneva. A nice touch
after the earlier stumbles.

Anton Korsakov handled the beats and high leaps of the Blue Bird variation with
ease, though not with any particular distinction. His partner was the rail-thin
Yulia Bolshakova (replacing the listed Daria Pavlenko). Her Princess Florina had
a forced, unnaturally athletic quality.

Overall, Kirov ballet director Makhar Vaziev continues to keep standards high.
The corps de ballet displayed the discipline and impressive symmetry for which
it is renowned; the soloists were of varying caliber, though. The fairy soloists
were still finding that proper balance between virtuosity and character, though
Tatiana Tkachenko and Yana Selina made fine impressions.

The dancers had fun with those over-the-top acting roles: Igor Petrov as
diva-esque Carabosse and Andrey Yakolev as both the hapless Catalabutte and the
prince's tutor Galifron. Anton Lukovkin was Puss in Boots, while his partner was
Yana Selina as the White Cat, and the two brought liveliness to a duet that's
too often done on autopilot.

Simon Virsaladze's sets and costumes are in varying stages of unloveliness. The
wigs have become particularly unsightly. But with dancers and musicians of this
order, it registered, but didn't much matter.

October 7, 2005

DANCE REVIEW

'Beauty' with a hollow center
The object of a certain prince's affection is none too clear as the Kirov takes
on a revision of a classic.

by Lewis Segal

Midway through Marius Petipa's 1890 ballet classic, "The Sleeping Beauty,"
there's a pantomime passage in which the Prince sadly confesses to the Lilac
Fairy that there's no one he loves — and she shows him a vision of what he's
been waiting for all his life: the enchanted, enchanting Princess Aurora.

You won't find that passage in Konstantin Sergeyev's 1952 revision of "The
Sleeping Beauty," which Russia's Kirov Ballet performed Wednesday at the Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion on the opening night of a five-performance engagement.
Instead, you'll see the Prince and the Lilac Fairy dancing together so long that
it's reasonable to assume he's in love with her — after which Aurora makes an
anticlimactic entrance.

ADVERTISEMENT
This small but disastrous reversal of Petipa's intentions is one of the many,
many wrong decisions that the '52 version makes in trying to replace mime with
dance and change "The Sleeping Beauty" into something like a classical
abstraction.

Yes, Sergeyev refers to the story often enough, but the choreographic variety
and emotional context of the original have been so compromised that the result
seems much longer than the authentic, unabridged 1890 edition that the Kirov
reconstructed six years ago.

At the pavilion, the performance starts magnificently with passionate playing of
the glorious Tchaikovsky score by the company orchestra, conducted by Boris
Gruzin. But unanimity significantly erodes by the time the Lilac Fairy puts
everyone under her century-long sleeping spell.

The newly rebuilt sets designed by the late Simon Virsaladze take longer to
disappoint, with the opening court scene offering as much palatial grandeur as
you could wish. But by the time the Prince takes a very slow boat to his final
confrontation with the malignant fairy Carabosse — an event made murky and
undramatic behind layers of gauze — Virsaladze too proves unequal to the
challenge.

The 1999 reconstruction has helped the Kirov warm the dancing and deepen what
pantomime remains in the version on view here. This remains a great company, and
this ballet was created to show what it can do. Even when the corps looks
under-rehearsed, the sense of an impeccably refined style in everyone's minds
and bodies reminds you of the idealized, sculptural vision that the finest
classical dancing communicates.

Despite all the expressively pointless pointe-dancing that has been added to her
role, Uliana Lopatkina conveyed a deeply centered spiritual authority as
Wednesday's Lilac Fairy. Indeed, Igor Petrov's small-scale Carabosse — nasty
rather than evil — became a pushover for her, so there wasn't much dramatic
tension in their confrontations.

As always, Diana Vishneva found drama in the choreographic contrasts in her
role, brilliantly clarifying every shift in rhythm or impetus and helping you
see how each step adds to the portrait of Aurora that Petipa created — a
portrait she embellished with a sensual stretch all her own.

Her partnership with Igor Zelensky did not always go smoothly, especially in the
radically cantilevered supported balances of the Vision Scene but also,
fleetingly, in the last-act pas de deux. This prince looked more comfortable in
his flamboyant, interpolated solos, and this princess found less effortful
partners among the rose-bearing suitors of Act 1.

But Vishneva and Zelensky do match each other in majesty, and it's a quality
that their younger colleagues need to learn. Certainly Anton Korsakov and Yulia
Bolshakova (who replaced Daria Pavlenko) needed more of it in their promising
but uneven performance of the Bluebird duet. Remarkable technique (his) and
exceptional freshness (hers) are only a start.

Among the many soloists who make "The Sleeping Beauty" as much a company vehicle
as a star showpiece, the standouts included Yana Serebriakova as what this
version calls the Courage Fairy, Viktoria Tereshkina in the Diamond variation
and Yana Selina as the White Cat. Like Vishneva, these artists add something
individual to the steps and poses you've seen countless times, inviting you to
reexperience a classic through their unique perceptions and talents.

As classics go, "The Sleeping Beauty" is a tricky anomaly. In structure, it's a
throwback or tribute to pre-Romantic ballets in which a wisp of plot supported
huge suites of formal dances. However, Petipa and Tchaikovsky took enormous care
to ground each suite in human emotion — and the centerpiece is that
high-Romantic search of the Prince for his dream lover.

As the Kirov proved in 1999, Petipa could bring formal splendor and intense
feeling to "The Sleeping Beauty," and Ninette de Valois also succeeded in her
various shortened and reduced productions for England's Royal Ballet. But
unfortunately, the 1952 Kirov staging was essentially a misguided attempt to
force Petipa to conform to notions of "pure" symphonic ballet — and what's
missing is now much missed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

Daily Breeze (Feature) October 7, 2005

Dance: 'Sleeping Beauty' kicks off Music Center dance season

By Elizabeth Khuri

When all else fails, think big. That's what Marius Petipa did in 1890 when given
one final chance to lure audiences to Russia's Maryiinski Theater.

Armed with a Tchaikovsky score, Petipa delivered big-time, with the 1890 ballet
"Sleeping Beauty," a four-hour extravaganza, complete with mime, choreographic
gems and a carnival of fairy-tale characters that would put Shrek to shame.

Russia's Kirov Ballet brings the 115-year old classic to Los Angeles' Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion on Wednesday, kicking off the third season of "Dance at the
Music Center."

The ballet required the shipping from Russia of more than 10 tons of sets, 500
costumes, wigs, 40 dancers, 70 members of the orchestra and a multinational crew
of about 80.

"For the country, we call this the treasure of the Russian ballet," said Sergei
Danilian, president and CEO of Ardani Artists, the company presenting the Kirov
Ballet.

The original Petipa version, which was relaunched in 1999, defined pageantry.
The ballet had long sections of mime and procession, followed by dancing in the
third act. Today's streamlined version stems from a 1952 reworking by Konstantin
Sergeev and Fedor Lopukhov.

"It's not just that they cut it, they made it more interesting and more
difficult for dancers," Danilian said.

Dancers love the ballet, now three acts of dancing with a plethora of quirky
solos designed to showcase different styles. The role of the Canary Fairy, with
its fluttering flute music, allows a small dancer to shine, with clean allegro
technique. The Lilac Fairy puts the spotlight on a tall woman with a bravura
adagio.

Companies often cast the male Blue Bird role to a young up-and-coming technical
virtuoso, a role that requires a seemingly endless series of cabrioles.

The current tour marks a period when the younger generation of Kirov dancers
stands poised to enter the spotlight. Danilian noted that technical whiz Elena
Vostrotila, the Lilac Fairy, is 19 and still a member of the corps de ballet.

With youth comes the question of sophistication. One of the greatest challenges
of the princess Aurora role is for the dancer to hold the audience's attention
for the length of the ballet.

The dancer creates interest from physical execution, Danilian said.

"You have to be on stage in good shape. You have to keep the audience's
attention from movement to movement, and you have to dance at a very high level
to do so," he said.

If the dancer slogs through the pirouettes and series of balances in the Rose
Adagio, forgetting to perfectly combine technique and sparkly character, the
audience can become lost.

Kirov ballerina Diana Vishneva called Aurora her favorite role.

"I am very happy that I have in my repertory, Aurora," Vishneva said. "She is
very charming, beautiful, but it is most important for her dances that you be
well- prepared, because it's a lot of technical difficulties."

Vishneva says she tries to focus on her rapport with her partners as she dances.

"You must have good chemistry with the conductor and be physically
well-trained," she added.

Elizabeth Khuri is a freelance writer based in Santa Monica.

EIFMAN'S 'JUAN' FOR THE BOOKS

By CLIVE BARNES

May 16, 2001 -- THE Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg's annual residency at City Center opened last weekend with the world premiere of Boris Eifman's "Don Juan & Moliere," the first time Eifman has scheduled a world premiere outside Russia.
Over the years, Eifman and his Eifman Ballet have become a wildly popular fixture of the New York dance scene, a phenomenon selling out City Center, partly by attracting audiences that seem to speak more Russian than English.
This time, his 50-strong troupe of classically trained and extraordinary dancer/actors rehearsed Eifman's latest creation here in upstate New York at the Kaatsbaan Dance Center in Tivoli.
Their company's link with the United States deepens a little further next weekend, when it offers American Ballet Theater's Julio Bocca as guest star in Eifman's "Russian Hamlet."
Eifman stands apart from other contemporary choreographers in his constant emphasis on theater, drama, spectacle, narrative and literature in more or less that order of importance.
"Don Juan & Moliere" is typical of his choreographic embrace and method - it runs two themes together, that of the ailing Moliere trying to write a play and direct his band of actors, and the play he is writing, his version of "Don Juan."
Eifman takes enormous liberties with both Moliere's life and "Don Juan" - which here doesn't even have an avenging statue - yet, no matter, what he does contrive is an elaborate collage interweaving an artist's life with an artist's creation.
His grotesque dance images and gestures have an angularity suggestive of cubist portraits, his duets are astonishing, but his ensemble dances tend toward the repetitious.
Yet that ensemble is so remarkable, its sense of style so impeccable, that this seething background to Eifman's complex storytelling almost becomes part of the astonishing scenery and costumes provided, as usual, by the resident decor magician Slava Okunev.
Eifman always provides two distinct and equal casts for his ballets. Here both a newcomer Alexei Turkov and Yuri Ananyan starred as Don Juan, while Igor Markov and Albert Galichanin were their respective counterparts as Moliere.
Turkov is clearly destined to be a major star, but both of the entire casts were equal in the astonishing calibration of character - so you never know where the seamless acting starts or the dancing ends. For they don't - it's a unique fusion.
EIFMAN BALLET
City Center
131 W. 55th St.
between Sixth and Seventh avenues
(212) 581-1212.
Through Sunday.

May 14, 2001

DANCE REVIEW

Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg: Molière Creates and Meets an Alter Ego, Don Juan

By ANNA KISSELGOFF

As sheer spectacle and exercise in provocative style, Boris Eifman's new ballet, "Don Juan & Molière," is a winner even by his own extravagant standards.
Mr. Eifman knows how to pour it on, down to every cinematic dissolve in the lighting and every grand gesture in his expressive choreography. The extraordinary dancers in the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg, which opened on Friday at City Center, now include a 21-year-old newcomer of superstar level named Aleksei Turko.
Ostensibly a portrait of Molière in the throes of writing his play about Don Juan and interacting with his own characters, "Don Juan & Molière" is something more than another psychobiography. At its world premiere on Friday at City Center, its stunning visual impact superseded the theatricality of other Eifman ballets seen annually at City Center since 1998.
On a broader level, the work is about an artist and creativity. There have been other ballets on this theme, notably "Illuminations," Frederick Ashton's essay on the poet Arthur Rimbaud. In this instance, Mr. Eifman suggests that a creator can identify with his characters and that they sometimes run away from him.
In no time, Don Juan springs full blown metaphorically from Molière's brow and the structure of the ballet alternates scenes related to Molière's life and episodes on the Don Juan theme. That Mr. Turko steps into a blaze of red-lit hell is no surprise. With an amazingly resilient technique and a demonic glare on his handsome face, Mr. Turko makes his antihero a driven man. Molière was no prude, but the wise man in his view observes moderation.
There is true genius in some of the episodes, and here Slava Okunev's magnificent two-level set — a theatrical proscenium above the real stage — plays a major role. Toward the end, when a masked Louis XIV, dazzling in a gold costume as the Sun King, turns his back on the upper stage, this rejection of the dying Molière below is not just visual but highly emotional.
Also toward the end, Don Juan, not remorseful but depressed, slumps at a long table to which his servant has invited seven female ninnies as entertainment. Their mimed chewing, drinking and singing at the banquet is so perfectly comic that the image does not jar with the ballet's pretensions to seriousness.
There is also an authentic echo of a theatrical family. When Molière's actors rush in to join him, the sense of communality is real, as when he interrupts them in a scene from the play.
The episodes are sharply drawn, although Mr. Eifman's style precludes consistent depth of characterization. His choreography is broad for the ensembles, sometimes repetitive in its deliberate grotesquerie and dislocation of the body. Yet the duets are rich in their acrobatic expressiveness. To say Mr. Eifman is a choreographer of gesture rather than steps is only partly true: he uses the entire body as an expressive gesture and when he throws in conventional ballet steps, they have a dramatic value.
Igor Markov was the sensitive Molière on Friday night and Albert Galichanin was the more tormented one on Saturday afternoon opposite Yuri Ananyan, whose dramatic presence made for a more aristocratic Don Juan than Mr. Turko's. One doesn't need to chose among any of these dancers. There were all magnificent and you will not see their kind elsewhere.
Unusually, "Don Juan" ended its run yesterday. Next weekend will feature Mr. Eifman's "Russian Hamlet" with Julio Bocca of American Ballet Theater as a guest on Friday and Saturday nights.
In "Don Juan," Mr. Eifman extends the device of using two composers as he did in "Russian Hamlet" last year. The Don Juan character is identified with a variety of Mozart's compositions, beginning with the overture to "Don Giovanni." Molière is identified with Berlioz's music, although this strict formula may break down within the ensembles. But the stitched-together score on tape is unusually coherent and has a varied dramatic pace.
Life and art are meshed in the double roles for the women. Armande, Molière's feckless young wife, and Donna Anna, from the play, were danced on Friday by Vera Arbuzova, always lyrical in her lean beauty, and by Natalya Povorozniuk, who differentiated the two roles more sharply on Saturday afternoon. Madeleine, reportedly Armande's mother and Elvira in the play, had a human warmth in Yelena Kuzmina's vibrant performance on Friday and received a more youthful vitality from Alina Solonskaya on Saturday.
Aleksandr Melkayev on Friday and Rady Miniakhmetov on Saturday made Don Juan's servant more than an acrobatic clown. All the dancers have been coached into detailed facial expressions that are in harmony with every gesture and leap. This acting within dance is different from acting imposed upon dance.
Molière's play "Don Juan," produced in 1665, was never officially banned but it was taken off the boards after 15 performances. A story about a libertine is a story about sex, and Mr. Eifman's Don Juan moves from seduction to seduction until Donna Anna, in an oddly poetic image, stabs herself.
Some will find the sexual encounters in these duets, including Molière's pursuit of Armande, crude. Yet the ballet is more about Molière's writing block than any other kind of impotence.