KareninA Closed the 28th Theatre Season with a Full House

KareninA: Love at First Sight

The premiere of the ballet KareninA in Astrakhan was awaited with special interest. It was staged by the Honored Artist of Russia, the laureate of the professional ballet award “Soul of Dance” Vera Arbuzova, who herself once danced the part of Leo Tolstoy's heroine in the ballet by Boris Eifman. For the first time on the Astrakhan stage, a psychological drama in modern choreography with an unusual musical accompaniment was presented.

Before the premiere, the Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the theater Valery Voronin told the journalists that he had long wanted to offer the audience a modern neoclassical production. “It is right when different choreographers work in the theater,” emphasized Valery Voronin. “We have many wonderful classical ballets, this production will present a new modern choreographic vocabulary, the theater continues to develop and experiment”.

The ballet KareninA combines many things: choreography, music, production design, video content, and even opera... The scenes of the performance, like recognizable chapters of a novel, change so fast that the audience, as if in the cinema, is transported each time to a new reality, to a different place, with different personages.

Vera Arbuzova expanded the boundaries of the love triangle to a square. The fourth main character of the performance was the Narrator. This mysterious character is associated with the fate itself, and with the creator, and maybe with the director Vera Arbuzova, who decided to be with her characters throughout the performance. “This ballet is my personal attitude to Leo Tolstoy's novel. This is the story of my Anna Karenina, her life, her tortures, sufferings, joy and love,” the choreographer noted.

The ballet KareninA is filled with internal psychological energy and is surprisingly precise in its emotional impact. This is not a choreographic fantasy, but a philosophical interpretation of Tolstoy's novel. The soloists of the theater Sofia Romanova and Maria Shcheglova, who danced only classical ballet before, now have to express mad love in a new way with the language of the body.

The sophisticated level of performance technique which renders the psychological twists and turns of the novel, such as despair and emotional tension, was demonstrated by Vsevolod Tabachuk, Daniil Sokolov, Artur Almukhametov and Rudolf Dudoladov.

The crowd scenes at the hippodrome, during the Venetian carnival, in the theater, and, certainly, Anna's dream, in which she foresees the end, captivate with their beauty, powerful energy, and rhythmic tension. “It is not the ballet we know and, undoubtedly, love. It is over-the-top technique and breathtaking lifts. It is the incredible beauty of bodies!” the Astrakhan citizens shared their impressions after the premiere.

The art of ballet helps to depict the depth of drama in a special way and can even get into the subconscious. The emotional content of the performance held the audience in suspense until the final chord.

The costumes of the ballet dancers helped to reveal the characters and mood of the personages, the style of the epoch, and the etiquette. The production designer from St. Petersburg Violetta Zhigalina, who created the collection, noted that she drew inspiration from the designers of the early 20th century, when women's fashion moved away from crinolines and corsets, but at the same time retained femininity and silhouette. The scenery and action taking place on the stage will transport the viewers to the luxurious secular salons of St. Petersburg and Venice, to the Roman Theater, to the hippodrome, and the platform of the Nikolaevsky station... The piercing sound of locomotive wheels completed the story of fatal passion and despair of a woman in love.

The symphonic orchestra of the theater, conducted by Valery Voronin, masterfully managed to convey the world of feelings and experiences. The interweaving of music by Britten, Levashkevich, Mozart, Liszt, Monteverdi, and Rachmaninoff laid a new musical basis for the ballet: modern, expressive, full of bold sound and dynamic contrasts; it convincingly rendered what the directors and musicians “heard” on the pages of the novel by Tolstoy. Its deep drama, turning into elegance and lightness, absolutely corresponded to the amplitude of feelings of the characters of the novel.

The ballet Anna Karenina has been successfully performed on different theater stages in Russia and abroad for almost half a century. It was staged by Alexei Ratmansky and Boris Eifman, John Neumeier and Angelica Kholina. The new work by the choreographer Vera Arbuzova in Astrakhan is completely original in its style: emotional, moving, exciting. On the eve of the premiere, the choreographer said that it had been easy and pleasant for her to work in the theater She noted the creative atmosphere at the rehearsals, the support of the management and the energy of the unique building, its architectural coloring. KareninA received well-deserved recognition and won rave reviews: the audience stood up and applauded and did not let the actors, musicians, directors, and conductor of the performance leave the stage for a long time.

With a full house, KareninA ended the theatrical season only to return again in the year of the 150th anniversary of Leo Tolstoy beginning his novel.