The ballet, Anna Karenina is based on Leo Tolstoy’s famed late nineteenth-century novel and bears the same title. Tolstoy’s novel relates the tragic story of Anna, a beautiful married aristocrat, and her affair with the affluent bachelor, Count Vronsky who presses Anna to leave her husband Karenin, a prominent government official. Anna is vulnerable in the face of crushing social pressure of Moscow’s aristocracy, her own insecurities, and Karenin’s indecision. As the affair progresses and becomes a public scandal, Anna is shunned.
Despite Vronsky’s reassurances and Karenin’s forgiveness, Anna grows increasingly concerned about Vronsky’s imagined infidelity. The situation becomes more complex until it unravels and ends in tragedy. Using the language of dance and combining excerpts from music by Tchaikovsky in a remarkably impressive way to demonstrate the brilliant technical mastery of the dancers, choreographer Eifman portrays the essential nuances of Tolstoy’s novel, including the stunning turning point in the plot and the heart-rending drama of Anna’s deteriorating emotional state. The music is performed by the PKF-Prague Philharmonia under the baton of David Levi.
