Red Giselle

Boris Eifman's choreographic imagination has immortalized history of great Russian ballerina Olga Spessivtseva which has got to whirlpool of events of an epoch of revolutionary terror. Expatriation and personal tragedies have aggravated sincere torments of the heroine that has led to a tragic outcome...
Extraordinary expressive choreography, inexhaustible director's imagination, the magnificent scenic decision involve in this performance of new admirers.
The choreographer notices that «Red Giselle» one of the major steps in its creative ascension.

‘By creating this ballet we wanted to pay the tribute on behalf of the ballet theater to the memory of Olga Spessivtseva, a great ballerina with the tragic fate.

Our ballet is dedicated to Olga Spessivtseva, one of the greatest ballerinas of the twentieth century. I was astonished when I learned the details of her life: the unique actress, bathed in glory and worshipped by fans and critics, spent 20 years in an asylum outside New York, absolutely alone and deprived of all her rights! The tragic emotions I felt, became the impulse for creating the ballet. This is not an illustration for Spessivtseva’s biography; rather this is an attempt to generalize her fate and the fates of many talented people who were forced to leave Russia and who came to a tragic end.

Spessivtseva was a brilliant Giselle. The ballerina got into the role so deeply that she lacked the power to come back to the real life: Giselle's fate became hers. That fact that Spessivtseva as a prima-ballerina became involved in the bloody events of the revolutionary Petrograd played a fatal role in her life: the red symbol, like the symbol of the fate, haunted and tortured her. The emigration did not only bring her professional and personal disappointments, it filled her life with even more tragedies that led, in the long run, to the catastrophe.'

ACT ONE
Revolutionary Petrograd. In a ballet studio at a former imperial theatre, a lesson in classical dance is in progress. Among the dancers the harsh and meticulous Teacher chooses the one, whose perfect dance and a slightly mysterious image embody his ideal of the beauty.

A shiny gilt-decorated auditorium. Ballerina's performance wins general applause. Among her admirers is a representative of the new authorities, Checkist . He is attracted to Ballerina not only by her exquisite art. Chekist’s harsh attack and powerful embraces suppress Ballerina’s will.

Chekist brings Ballerina to his world, unknown to her, where the wild rampage of the revolutionary mob turns into a mad carnival of annihilation. She reigns over this carnival, having forgotten, for a moment, the behests of the Teacher. However, the spiritual values he had instilled in her prove to be stronger than the intoxication of the annihilation. Ballerina returns to the ballet studio, to the Teacher. A new, cruel, and aggressive regime now reigns in the theater; it crushes everything standing in its path. White ballerinas are to become the obedient instrument of the red ideology. The Teacher is in despair. The reality is unbearable, but he is unable to change anything.

Ballerina and Chekist are bound by a complex relationship. There is attraction and repulsion, passion and non-understanding. Chekist allows Ballerina to join the emigres who are leaving Russia forever.

ACT TWO

Ballet class at the Grand Opera in Paris. A famous dancer and choreographer conducts the rehearsal. The dancing technique that he shows is unfamiliar to Ballerina, but his creative inspirational talent captivates her. The dancer becomes her Partner, and they share a triumphant success. >Ballerina’s growing feelings for her Partner are not reciprocated. The unrequited love and loneliness in the world that is alien to her aggravate her mental state and push her toward a nervous breakdown.Ballerina tries to lose herself in the merriment of Paris. But the phantoms of the past haunt there as well.

The red flashbacks of the Revolution do not leave her in peace. Chekist appears to her in a nightmarish hallucination.Nor can Ballerina forget herself in her favorite role of Giselle, in which she used to amaze the audience and won the world fame. She is sentenced to Giselle's fate— to the betrayal of her beloved and the eventual madness. Mirrors refract the morbid consciousness of the great Ballerina. Madness appears as the salvation, or the departure into the flickering world of ‘the other side of the mirror glass.’

• Modena, Italy
  May 06, 2012 (19:00)
• Pavia, Italy
  May 08, 2012 (19:00)