Boris Eifman: Russia's maverick choreographer

By Joy Goodwin International Herald Tribune

NEW YORK: Soviet-era film clip of a rehearsal of the Leningrad Ballet Ensemble shows the choreographer Boris Eifman at work on a duet for his 1987 ballet, "The Master and Margarita." Dressed in black, his intense face framed by a shock of black curls and a dark beard, Eifman hovers over his two dancers, instructing and explaining with evident passion.

"I would like some heavier poses," he says, dramatically bending his neck to one side to demonstrate.

This month in Midtown Manhattan Eifman again stood with his back to studio mirrors, rehearsing his dancers in one of the four ballets that the 45-member Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg is performing during its two-and-a-half-week engagement at City Center, which opened on Friday. His distinctive locks and beard were gray, his body a bit stouter and less nimble. But his zeal was unmistakably the same.

Dramatic movements and clear-cut poses have always been hallmarks of Eifman's company, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Theatrical glitter has been another constant: extravagant sets and costumes and an often spectacular use of lighting and stage effects.

Eifman has also typically chosen tragic psychological narratives for his ballets, from tales of heroes and heroines trapped in asylums ("Red Giselle," "Don Quixote," "The Master and Margarita") to sagas of characters crushed by their societies ("Anna Karenina," "Tchaikovsky," "Russian Hamlet"). And from the beginning his work has split audiences and critics into galvanized camps, those who adore his ballets and those who avoid them.

The Siberian-born Eifman, a promising graduate of the Leningrad Conservatory, was appointed director of the little-known Leningrad Ballet Ensemble at 30, in 1977. And if much has remained constant over the last three decades, much has also changed.

"The life of my company can really be divided into three decades," Eifman said recently through an interpreter, "the Soviet period, the perestroika era and the last 10 years."

The timing of his career, Eifman acknowledged, had played a crucial part in his success. Unlike his mentor, the experimental choreographer Leonid Jakobson, Eifman came along when the regime's cultural restrictions were beginning to loosen. "It's my huge luck that I was born 40 years later than Jakobson," he said. "Because Jakobson only fought. But I had the opportunity not only to fight but to win."

Yet in 1977 Eifman's prospects didn't look much brighter than Jakobson's had. Eifman managed to secure his own small Leningrad ballet company. But even before its first performance he found himself battling cultural bureaucrats over his choice of music for one dance on the program: Pink Floyd. Eifman threatened to cancel his sold-out concert if he couldn't perform the piece. Half an hour before curtain he received permission to do it - once.

Political gamesmanship demanded much of Eifman's energy in his company's first decade. But he persisted in pursuing controversial subjects. Not surprisingly cultural authorities often called him into their offices. "They said that it would be best if I left, and that, as at that time Jews were being allowed to emigrate to the United States, they were ready to let me go at any moment," Eifman said.



Instead he stayed and built his company, serving as the troupe's sole choreographer, as well as administrator, teacher, recruiter, marketer and government liaison.

By 1986, doubting that he could go on much longer, Eifman decided to create the ballet he assumed would destroy his theater, "The Master and Margarita." "I staged a very sincere ballet," he said. "I showed the mental institution where the dissident is taken to have his thoughts suppressed. And there was no question in my mind, after that I wouldn't be allowed to continue working."

Yet the moment that he finished it, in 1987, perestroika was taking root. "When I showed my ballet to the commission," Eifman recalled, "the panel said, 'Oh, it's a work of art of the new Russia.' " He added, "Overnight I went from dissident to people's hero."

That success ushered in a period of transformation that lasted through 1997. For the first time Eifman was able to create ballets freely. In 1988 the state granted the company its own rehearsal space, and state financing remained stable even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

A new generation of dancers arrived, and with them the Eifman style was forged. It was bold, psychological and highly theatrical, and its off-kilter classical movement was performed by expressive actor-dancers who transmitted what he called "a new kind of emotional energy" onstage.

A phone call from the arts promoter Sergei Danilian in 1996 heralded a third era. The company had already been touring in Europe; now Danilian proposed to introduce Eifman to the U.S. market. In 1998 the company began what would become a regular tour of U.S. cities.