Don Quixote or The Fantasies of a Madman

Boris Eifman's ballet «Don Quixote or Fantasies of a Madman» is absolutely new reconsideration of world famous classical ballet of the past. Having kept the musical score, the choreographer creates original vision of an axiomatic drama plot, escaping from frameworks of archaic forms.

Eifman's hero the imaginations creates life full of beauty and harmony, pleasure and love. The world of illusions – is sated and light, but at contact with a bitter and gloomy reality, threatens to turn back tragedy.


‘We are living under the debris of our own illusions. In his dreams, man creates the plot of his life, but the meeting of fantasy and reality produces a tragic effect.
I have taken on this ballet because I saw in it the possibility to combine an eternal, abiding beauty which people need so much with modern-day reality.

In the new ballet, Don Quixote is one of the patients in a lunatic asylum, and this is not by chance: the play is modelled on real life. An ill man imagines himself to be Don Quixote and tries to be kind, caring, and loving towards other people – but is such an attempt a symptom of a mental disability?

If it is, then long live the madman's fantasy which allows him, albeit in a dream, to build a harmonious world which is able to transcend the mundane inertia of being and to challenge the power of evil engulfing humankind.’

ACT ONE
Weird and pitiful inmates of a mad-house. Among them, a crazy dreamer who thinks he is Don Quixote, a Spanish knight. He inspires his fellow inmates with his daydreams of the beauties of Spain.

The Doctor's merciless whistle breaks into the dreamer's colorful world, destroying it. The harsh reality is now cramped into dimensions of a metal circle.
But the work of imagination cannot be stopped. One step... and the patients are already in the sunny Barcelona. Here the madman's dreams acquire real form – in the shape of the charming Kitri who is about to be forced into marriage with a rich nobleman Gamache by her father, Lorenzo, the tavern-owner. The dreamer is determined to thwart Lorenzo's greedy plans. His imagination has no bounds; he transforms into the handsome Basil, a rival to the rich Gamache.

Again the Doctor's hateful whistle shrieks, bringing the crazy dreamer back to the gloomy walls of the mad-house.

At the Doctor's order, the inmates start to play a ball game which bends the dreamer to its will. The ball transforms into a sinister hallucination and destroys the fantasies. For a brief moment one can escape from its oppression. But the whistle will blow again: and there is no escape from the Doctor...

ACT TWO
Nights are bizarre in the mad-house. One night, when the longing for freedom becomes unbearable, the two inmates decide to escape.

The reality of a modern urban life: here morals are tough and cruel. The naive dreamer interferes into a street fight and saves a young girl from attack. The mob mocks at him, making fun of his noble gesture. And in the girl, whose honor he has saved, the dreamer sees the beautiful Dulcinea-Kitri. He takes her into the world of his fantasy where even the most improbably bold dreams become true...

Barcelona. Lorenzo and Gamache appear. Lorenzo insists that his daughter marry the rich nobleman. Basil pretends to commit suicide. But he immediately comes to life when Don Quixote manages to persuade the tavern-owner to give his blessing to the young couple's marriage. Wedding festivities. Don Quixote announces a tournament in honor of beauty and love...

Reality is pitiless; it has come a full circle: it is sad to return into ‘the cloister of madness’. But the world created by the dreamer's imagination is eternal.

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