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Passion in motion
Dec 09, 2025, 04:00 IST
World-renowned choreographer Boris Eifman marks the India debut of his company, Eifman Ballet, with the emotionally seismic Anna Karenina
Anjali Kochhar
For a city that thrives on excesses—of emotion, ambition and speed—this week is poised to offer a different kind of spectacle. The Eifman Ballet, the famed Saint Petersburg company, whose works are known to leave audiences trembling long after the curtain falls, is making its India debut at the NCPA.
To mark its first-ever performance, the company is presenting Boris Eifman’s masterwork, Anna Karenina, a ballet that over the last 20 years has toured more than 40 countries, including Europe, America and the Middle East. “What we deliver transcends spectacle,” says Eifman, the choreographer often hailed as a “magician of the theatre”, in an email interview. “Ballet, for me, is not entertainment. It is a means of existence — my mission on this earth. Through it, I express the emotions that would suffocate me if I did not release them through art. This spiritual intensity cannot be found anywhere else.”
The production is in Mumbai as part of an Asia Tour spanning China, Vietnam, and India, an indication of how the company views the region’s rising cultural appetite. “I believe Indian audiences will feel our art instinctively. Beneath cultural differences, the soul responds the same way — to tragedy, to ecstasy, to catharsis,” says Eifman.
Psychology of love
Staged to a sweeping Tchaikovsky score, the ballet uses dramatic light, sculptural movement, and towering sets to convert the stage into a psychological battlefield. Designed by Zinovy Margolin (sets) and Vyacheslav Okunev (costumes), and lit by Gleb Filshtinsky, the production is as visually arresting as it is emotionally piercing. “Ballet is where psychological drama is reenacted and fulfilled. It is where we access the subconscious. Every production is a search for the unknown. Anna Karenina contains passions, metamorphoses, and phantasmagoria unmatched even in contemporary literature,” says Eifman.
The ballet, based on Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 novel Anna Karenina, follows the measured life of the Karenin family, and how their illusion of harmony collapses when the married Anna surrenders to passion. “Her love for Vronsky [a military officer] destroys duty, motherhood, and identity. She becomes an outcast. And her suicide is not only an escape from torment, but the extermination of the demon within her,” says Eifman, adding, “Many women today stand where Anna once stood, between passion and responsibility, between desire and duty. Our ballet speaks to these universal conflicts.”
A demanding universe
The ballet doesn’t just present a love story, but a woman’s psychological disintegration made visible through bodies in motion.
The company will be bringing more than 50 dancers, crew members, and technical specialists, carrying their own lighting design, set mechanisms, and costumes.
Eifman’s dancers, known for emotional ferocity and physical fearlessness, train intensely for this universe. “Over the last 50 years, we created a new type of dancer,” he says. “They must master classical ballet, modern dance, dramatic theatre, and deep psychological expression. They channel the human soul through their body. This is rare.” According to Eifman, no “ballet school today produces dancers who fully meet our demands, except the academy we built in Saint Petersburg. We had to create an institution that could create the dancer.”
For the NCPA, the event represents an institutional pinnacle, one that honours the original dream of its founders. “This is exactly what JRD Tata and Dr Jamshed Bhabha envisioned when they created NCPA,” says KN Suntook, chairman. “They wanted an institution that introduced Indian audiences to the greatest art forms in the world. Presenting Eifman Ballet brings us closer to that ideal.”
The historical ties with Russia, he says, make this collaboration natural. “For decades, India has been adored in Russia,” says Suntook. “Raj Kapoor was a national hero there. Hema Malini, Lata Mangeshkar — our stars were deeply loved. Cultural exchange has always been two-way. It is time we reciprocate by welcoming their finest.” Eifman firmly believes that the ballet will linger even after the final bow. “People remember our productions for years,” he says. “Because they do not simply watch the story — they live inside it. And something inside them changes.”
The ballet will be staged today and tomorrow at the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point
For a city that thrives on excesses—of emotion, ambition and speed—this week is poised to offer a different kind of spectacle. The Eifman Ballet, the famed Saint Petersburg company, whose works are known to leave audiences trembling long after the curtain falls, is making its India debut at the NCPA.
To mark its first-ever performance, the company is presenting Boris Eifman’s masterwork, Anna Karenina, a ballet that over the last 20 years has toured more than 40 countries, including Europe, America and the Middle East. “What we deliver transcends spectacle,” says Eifman, the choreographer often hailed as a “magician of the theatre”, in an email interview. “Ballet, for me, is not entertainment. It is a means of existence — my mission on this earth. Through it, I express the emotions that would suffocate me if I did not release them through art. This spiritual intensity cannot be found anywhere else.”
The production is in Mumbai as part of an Asia Tour spanning China, Vietnam, and India, an indication of how the company views the region’s rising cultural appetite. “I believe Indian audiences will feel our art instinctively. Beneath cultural differences, the soul responds the same way — to tragedy, to ecstasy, to catharsis,” says Eifman.
Psychology of love
Staged to a sweeping Tchaikovsky score, the ballet uses dramatic light, sculptural movement, and towering sets to convert the stage into a psychological battlefield. Designed by Zinovy Margolin (sets) and Vyacheslav Okunev (costumes), and lit by Gleb Filshtinsky, the production is as visually arresting as it is emotionally piercing. “Ballet is where psychological drama is reenacted and fulfilled. It is where we access the subconscious. Every production is a search for the unknown. Anna Karenina contains passions, metamorphoses, and phantasmagoria unmatched even in contemporary literature,” says Eifman.
The ballet, based on Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 novel Anna Karenina, follows the measured life of the Karenin family, and how their illusion of harmony collapses when the married Anna surrenders to passion. “Her love for Vronsky [a military officer] destroys duty, motherhood, and identity. She becomes an outcast. And her suicide is not only an escape from torment, but the extermination of the demon within her,” says Eifman, adding, “Many women today stand where Anna once stood, between passion and responsibility, between desire and duty. Our ballet speaks to these universal conflicts.”
A demanding universe
The ballet doesn’t just present a love story, but a woman’s psychological disintegration made visible through bodies in motion.
The company will be bringing more than 50 dancers, crew members, and technical specialists, carrying their own lighting design, set mechanisms, and costumes.
Eifman’s dancers, known for emotional ferocity and physical fearlessness, train intensely for this universe. “Over the last 50 years, we created a new type of dancer,” he says. “They must master classical ballet, modern dance, dramatic theatre, and deep psychological expression. They channel the human soul through their body. This is rare.” According to Eifman, no “ballet school today produces dancers who fully meet our demands, except the academy we built in Saint Petersburg. We had to create an institution that could create the dancer.”
For the NCPA, the event represents an institutional pinnacle, one that honours the original dream of its founders. “This is exactly what JRD Tata and Dr Jamshed Bhabha envisioned when they created NCPA,” says KN Suntook, chairman. “They wanted an institution that introduced Indian audiences to the greatest art forms in the world. Presenting Eifman Ballet brings us closer to that ideal.”
The historical ties with Russia, he says, make this collaboration natural. “For decades, India has been adored in Russia,” says Suntook. “Raj Kapoor was a national hero there. Hema Malini, Lata Mangeshkar — our stars were deeply loved. Cultural exchange has always been two-way. It is time we reciprocate by welcoming their finest.” Eifman firmly believes that the ballet will linger even after the final bow. “People remember our productions for years,” he says. “Because they do not simply watch the story — they live inside it. And something inside them changes.”
The ballet will be staged today and tomorrow at the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point
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