Anna Karenina

Boris Eifman’s choreographic rendition of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina explores women’s dependency on sexual relationships. Eifman describes the heroine as a werewolf. “Two confrontational human beings co-existed in her,” he explains. “Anna belonged to high society, yet she was a woman deeply plunged into the world of stormy passions, unknown even to Dostoyevsky’s characters.” The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “It makes perfect sense that Eifman has turned to this story — the tale of a beautiful married woman who falls in love with the dashing army officer Count Vronsky, and whose husband, that status-conscious Karenin, ultimately uses their young son as a pawn in the marital breakup. After all, long based in St. Petersburg, Eifman knows the book’s literal and metaphorical geography like the back of his hand.” The Chicago Tribune review noted, “What initially appears as anguished melodrama grows into a fervent dialogue between bodies unable to contain their passions.”