"My whole dance creation is to seek a wider space for ballet, to find a body language that can express the spiritual life of human beings. Dance for me is not a physical expansion, but a spiritual exploration. "That's Boris Eifman's philosophy. In September, the new season kicks off with the Oriental Arts Center, where the Eifman Ballet will once again perform the sensational play Anna Karenina and for the first time bring the same literary classic, The Brothers Karamazov.
Anna Karenina
As early as the 1970s, Eifman began to find his own choreography direction, explore new genres, and the fierce contradictions and complex psychology of classical literary figures deeply attracted him, drawing inspiration from them, and constantly creating new works such as "Twelfth Night", "Red Giselle", "Don Juan and Molière", "Rodin" and so on. "My works are all about drama or real-life characters with stories, controversies, and contradictions, and these stories are easy to resonate with, allowing the audience to find an outlet for emotional catharsis from the longing, contradictions, pains, struggles, helplessness, despair, and death of the characters in the play."
"Anna Karenina", which is about to return to Dongyi again, has always occupied an important position in Eifman's heart. The tragic character of the heroine of Anna Karenina, the struggle between reason and emotion, responsibility and passion, conscience and desire, and the dark and destructive side of the soul are what interest him deeply. The Brothers Karamazov, on the other hand, continued and developed Eifman's art of psychological ballet, attempting to create a stage art that, in the same way as Dostoevsky's great exploration of inferior and destructive emotions.
The rich expressiveness of modern dance is combined with the vocabulary of classical ballet, based on sincere feelings and dramatic meanings, to explore the expressive techniques of philosophical thinking dating back to the 18th century, when the French dancer Jean-Georges Norville had made a more complete interpretation of plot ballet. Eifman grew up in the 20th century, when the soviet union's theatrical ballet flourished. Eifman's choreography is the inheritance and development of Russian dance aesthetics, he no longer adheres to the fairy tale and aesthetic construction of "Swan Lake", and pays more attention to and strengthens the theme selection and inner communication of ballet. The essence of literary works lies in revealing the essence of human nature, and Eifman's dance creation has always revolved around human nature.
The Brothers Karamazov
Eifman believes that the choreography of the new century is to innovate, to be close to contemporary audiences, to pay attention to current issues, and to openly explore the complexity and drama of modern society. Like the emotional needs of modern people, Eifman's orchestration of Anna born for love, moths to the fire for the instinct of lust, she has the personality of modern women who dare to love independently but is shackled by the ideas of the times. "The advance and retreat of extramarital affairs" and "love or marriage dilemma" are still hot topics in society until now. Eifman focuses on the emotional entanglement of Anna, Karenin and Vronsky in the complicated story line, while adding stream-of-consciousness expression to the dance, visualizing Anna's inner entanglements, contradictions, and pains, showing her attachment and enthusiasm for love and the destructive power of this pathological love.
The first performance of "The Brothers Karamazov" is adapted from Dostoevsky's last work, which is the peak of the writer's philosophical exploration and the most abundant and profound work - the pole of evil, the pole of greed, the pole of pain, the pole of love are all in it. The novel has two levels: on the surface it is a father-killing case, in which the victim's sons are suspected of conspiring to some extent; at a deep level, it is a dramatic story about the human spirit, telling the moral struggle between lust, faith, reason, and free will.
Eifman's The Brothers Karamazov is a new interpretation of the novel. In the choreography, he conceals the father-killer Smerdyakov, and the male character is dominated by the elder Karamazov and his three sons, constructing a world of good and no evil after the collapse of faith and moral standards with a large number of group dances and exciting movements. The dance movement pursues natural casualness, man loses the obvious characteristics of the individual and becomes a symbolic existence, and all people are doing the same struggle, that is, the struggle of the soul, the struggle between God and the devil, finding a balance between reason and sensibility, light and darkness.
The dance music of "The Brothers Karamazov" comes from the works of three composers, Wagner, Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff, and the stage design is simple and modern. In the changing music and lighting, the dancers show the good and evil and struggle of human nature, and each picture is very visually impactful. A beautiful and quiet melody just plunges the viewer into contemplation, and together the lights bring the viewer unguarded into another passionate picture. Eifman makes the ballet image no longer the knight princess and witch devil in the traditional sense of good and evil, they really exist around us, through the extreme movement of the body, the maximum release of people's unspeakable emotional and spiritual connotations.
In the dance section of the 19/20 performance season of Dongyi, in addition to the Eifmann Company in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Czech National Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Hong Kong Ballet, the National Ballet of China and other international and domestic well-known dance companies will appear successively to create a full range of ballet starlight feast.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Li Junna Text Editor: Li Junna Photo Editor: Xiang Jianying