© Valentin Baranovsky Eifman 'The Seagull' reviews 'The Seagull' reviews recent Eifman reviews more Renee Renouf reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Having seen Eifman’s Russian Hamlet, Red Ballerina, Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina, I was prepared stylistically for a fifth exposure. Taking Chekov’s play and using a ballet studio as the setting not only was adroit, but the Eifman fusion of classical ballet and acrobatic extensions fit the conflict like a glove. Sans regal or aristocratic trappings, The Seagull displayed Eifman’s style to tremendous advantage. The audience reveled in it; most of the orchestra provided the dancers with prolonged applause and a standing ovation.

Eifman’s style could not survive without a story, the more complex and tortured the plot the better. A newspaper interview quoted him as contemplating J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and the life of Sigmund Freud.

To my mind, with its supporting corps, Seagull is the best Eifman work to date; it relates his movement to the theme, utilizing it particularly for Triplov’s choreographic innovations to an electronic score to contrast with the conventional technical displays by Trigorin set to the strains of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Eifman’s version makes Arkadina a reigning ballerina; whippet-thin brunette Natalia Povorozniuk provided an angular, chic portrait of a self-absorbed ballerina willing to expend any amount from her bag of wiles to maintain her position. Opposite her was a blonde, square-faced radiance named Anastassia Sitnikova as Zarechinaya, a hopeless romantic with yearnings not only as a principal but for the stormy ballet master Trigorin, played with a full range of disdain, dominance and later a driven desperation by Oleg Markov.
 

Triplov was danced with uncommon skill and contortion by Oleg Gabyshev. Both Gabyshev and Sitnikova appear new to the company and principal roles. The choreographic demands, acrobatic in their distortions, displayed the newcomers to remarkable, if questionable, advantage.

The setting, using a curved backdrop dotted with evenly spaced spotlights, was wonderfully effective, as was the use of a curtain to signify front and center actions before an audience. Eifman has Triplov open the ballet confined in the metal outline of a box, stretching it out to enter the world. At the end, Triplov pulls the distorted metal outline back into place, confining himself again, utterly depleted.

No specific credit was made for the costumes, singularly apt for various scenes; for the corps, an exciting series of greys and black leotards; for Arkadina’s costumes the colors rose, blue and a dusky blue-purple in jersey with extreme cut outs and strips in the back made sufficient contrast. Eifman provides an amazing relief passage where the male corps de ballet, goggled and helmeted, are dressed in bright yellows, oranges and greens dancing convincing hip-hop; briefly the women enter in, but soon vanish their costumes with the appearance of Trigorin. Most touching was a sequined bra top and tutu Zarechinaya wore in a burlesque scene where she stands behind a transparent target. Men shoot phony bullets at the target, and she responds like a dying goose.

Eifman has obviously borrowed freely from the current palette of dance styles; not only hip-hop but Forsythe to appreciable degree. His skill lies in the mixture, musical selection and movement to emphasize the passionate histrionics of his given theme. The response by so many dance-savvy theater goers should remind choreographers that dramatic tales are out there to be explored.