In the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg’s production of TCHAIKOVSKY, PRO ET CONTRA, choreographer Boris Eifman examines how Tchaikovsky’s internal struggles inspired his music. It is a beautiful work, but not without flaws. An incredible cast, astonishing sets by Zinovy Margolin, gorgeous costumes by Olga Shaishmelashvili and Vyacheslav Okunev, lighting by Alexander Sivaev and Boris Eifman take the audience deep into the composer’s tortured imagination. The emotional angst is thick at times and during Act I the women playing to the audience with emotive smiles seem very much out of character. Fortunately, this dissipates in Act II. I longed, also, for a live orchestra to perform Tchaikovsky’s beautiful music.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian, late-romantic era composer who is best known in the dance world for his music for Swan Lake, Eugene Onegin, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker. Eifman opens with Tchaikovsky (Oleg Gabyshev) writhing in his death bed, tormented by his past. Eifman introduces Tchaikovsky’s alter ego (Sergey Volobuev) through a powerful duet between the two men dressed in long, white night shirts. The bed becomes a major focal point as other ghosts from his past magically appear from beneath it and the bed sheet.
The ballet shifts to Tchaikovsky’s early life and the young composer trying to fit into the world around him. There’s a bridge upstage and twelve couples dancing; the women carrying opened umbrellas. Tchaikovsky meets the beautiful Antonina Milyukova (Lyubov Andreyeva), who vies for his attention, but the composer is consumed by his inner demons and brushes her off. One of Eifman’s choreographic strengths in this ballet, is how he uses Tchaikovsky’s personal relationships to transform into scenes from his ballets. His conflicts with Antonina become inspiration for his ballet Swan Lake. His alter ego becomes Von Rothbart and, in a twist of characters, the swans protect Tchaikovsky from Antonina. He meets, and is attracted to a handsome young prince (Dmitry Krylov), but the man goes off with a pretty woman (Polina Petrova). This exchange morphs into The Nutcracker ballet where Drosselmeyer (his alter ego) turns the young soldier into a wooden nutcracker and his friend becomes the ballet’s young Clara. From another period in Tchaikovsky’s life, Eifman melts an encounter into the visualization of scenes from the ballet Eugene Onegin.
Act I concludes with Tchaikovsky's and Antonina's wedding. The ceremony begins joyously, but Antonina’s happiness quickly turns into sorrow when she realizes how tormented her husband is. There’s a beautiful pas de deux between the young couple in which Antonina’s veil becomes a trap and Tchaikovsky’s alter ego rapidly destroys any delusions she had about Tchaikovsky’s feelings for her. There’s a dynamic wedding night scene in which their spinning bed becomes an instrument of tragedy, and as the curtain falls on Act I, cheers of bravo erupt from the Los Angeles audience.