Eifman Ballet will celebrate its 45th anniversary with gala concerts at the Oktyabrskiy Big Concert Hall

In 2022, Eifman Ballet turns 45 years old. In honor of the significant date, the Company will show a unique two-act gala program on the stage of the Oktyabrskiy Big Concert Hall on September 29 and 30. Large-scale festive concerts will be the grand finale of the anniversary celebrations.

During the gala evenings, the audience will see fragments from the most popular ballets of the Company: Anna Karenina; Rodin, Her Eternal Idol; Beyond Sin; Tchaikovsky. PRO et CONTRA; Russian Hamlet; Molière Passion, or The Mask of Don Juan and others. These productions reflect the results of many years of Boris Eifman’s artistic search aimed at developing the world-wide demanded Russian contemporary choreographic art. The impeccably built dramaturgical structure of the program will allow the audience to get a comprehensive idea of the essence of the long-term aesthetic evolution of Eifman Ballet and its establishment as one of the leading ballet companies of our time.

A real surprise for the audience of the concerts will be the performance of specially restored fragments from the production The Master and Margarita and the ballet Two-Voice. These iconic productions by Boris Eifman from the 1970s and 1980s have long since disappeared from the stage, and many dance connoisseurs have never seen them live before.

The Oktyabrskiy Big Concert Hall is a landmark venue for the history of the Company. It was here exactly 45 years ago, on September 29, 1977, that the first public performance of Eifman Ballet (at that time called the Leningrad New Ballet) took place. The debut program of the young Company included one-act productions Only Love, Temptation, Under the Veil of Night and Interrupted Song. During the Soviet period, the nationwide and Leningrad premieres of such legendary productions and programs of Eifman’s chamber ballets as Boomerang, The Idiot, Autographs, The Legend, Metamorphoses, Second Lieutenant Romashov, The Master and Margarita, Requiem were held at the Oktyabrskiy Big Concert Hall.

The celebration of the 45th anniversary of Eifman Ballet started in the summer. In June and July, the Company had a large series of performances in St. Petersburg. On June 29, the exhibition “Eifman Ballet. Only Love” which tells about the rich creative path of the choreographer and the Company’s dancers opened at the Sheremetev Palace – Museum of Music, a branch of the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music. The exposition will be available to visitors until October 23. At the end of July, Eifman Ballet performed on the New Stage of the Bolshoi Theatre and pleased the audience with the Moscow premiere of the production The Seagull. A Ballet Story and the famous ballet Rodin, Her Eternal Idol. The Moscow tour was dedicated to the anniversary of the Company and was held as part of the Chereshnevy Les Open-Art Festival.

The General Sponsor of the events in honor of the anniversary of Eifman Ballet is VTB Bank.