Edward
May 26th, 2005, 12:33 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/arts/dance/24eifman-extra.html?
May 24, 2005
Steamy Duets and That Triangle Problem: Anna, Tortured Husband and Fickle Lover
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, 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, ultimately fickle 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"; shifts into some lesser-known material; 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 that 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. The Eifman Ballet is touring the United State through June 26.
May 24, 2005
Steamy Duets and That Triangle Problem: Anna, Tortured Husband and Fickle Lover
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, 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, ultimately fickle 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"; shifts into some lesser-known material; 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 that 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. The Eifman Ballet is touring the United State through June 26.