The Eifman Ballet will return to London Coliseum from 6 – 10 December with the UK premiere of Boris Eifman's Up & Down to music by Gershwin, Schubert and Berg. Set during the Jazz Age “the piece evokes the unstoppable feast of life; the era of freedom, sensuality, and hedonism”.
After visits from the company in 2012 (Rodin) and 2014 (Onegin and Anna Karenina), this time will also mark the Company's 40th anniversary.
Up & Down is based on Scott Fitzgerald novel from the '30s Tender Is the Night. It follows the rise and fall of a promising young psychoanalyst and one of his patients; presenting a bizarre kaleidoscope of obsessions, fears and fragments of patients' minds. The characters' own ups and downs are masterfully recreated by Eifman and his dancers.
Eifman has been described as a ‘philosopher choreographer', and defines this work as ‘psychological ballet' and was borne out of his own psychoanalytic research. He plunges into the unknown depths of his characters' inner worlds and penetrates into the most hidden places of the subconscious and depicts the disintegration of characters' consciousness, bringing their nightmares and delusions to the surface. He said,
Up & Down is a tragic and bright chronicle of a person's spiritual death. The story about how a dream of happiness turns into a disaster, and an externally beautiful and carefree life flowing to the rhythms of jazz – into a nightmare.
Up & Down, Eifman Ballet
Set design: Zinovy Margolin
Costume design: Olga Shaishmelashvili
Lighting design: Gleb Filshtinsky and Boris Eifman
London Coliseum, 6 – 10 December 2016
Tue – Sat 7.30pm & Sat 2pm matinee
Tickets: £10 – £85
Box Office: www.eno.org / 020 7845 9300
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
