Choreography: Boris Eifman Music: Peter Tchaikovsky, Alfred Shnitke,
Georges Bizet Scenery and costume designer: Vyacheslav Okunev
Premiere was held on 28 January 1997
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.’
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