Boris Eifman to shoot the screen ballet about Tchaikovsky

From January 18 to 29 the shooting of the screen ballet Tchaikovsky. PRO et CONTRA will take place at the St. Petersburg DK Lensoveta. Boris Eifman will be the Production Director.

Yury Shaygardanov, an authoritative Russian cinematographer, who is known for many popular films (Heart of a Dog by V. Bortko and Land of the Deaf by V. Todorovsky are among them) and who worked on the screen version of the ballet Up & Down in 2016, will act as the Director of Photography. The modern film equipment will be used during the shooting including 3 ARRI Alexa cameras (this model is widely applied in Hollywood today)

The main roles in the film will be performed by the soloists of Eifman Ballet, winners of international ballet contests, laureates of the Golden Mask and Golden Soffit awards, President of Russia’s Prize and the Russian Government prize: Oleg Gabyshev (as Tchaikovsky), Sergey Volobuev (as Tchaikovsky’s Double), Lyubov Andreyeva (as Antonina Milyukova, Tchaikovsky’s wife), Maria Abashova (as Nadezhda von Meck).

Tchaikovsky. PRO et CONTRA will be the sixth screen ballet by Boris Eifman for the last seven years. In 2010–2016 the screen versions of Anna Karenina (2010), Eugene Onegin (2010), Rodin (2012), Beyond Sin (2013) and Up & Down (2016) were created. The first four films were released on DVD. As the choreographer suggests, making the screen ballets allows not only to preserve Eifman Ballet’s repertory for the future generations and to acquaint the wide audience with the art of dance, but also “to get the new visual form of expressing philosophical and emotional substance of a ballet”.