Passions According to Paul

On March 31, the National Opera of Ukraine will host the famed St. Petersburg Ballet Theater’s show Russian Hamlet directed by Boris Eifman. Today his theater, whose repertoire list includes contemporary ballets, impresses audiences with large-scale corps-de-ballet formations as well as bright and original solo dancers. “My ballet troupe’s history falls into two parts: before and after perestroika,” Eifman once said in an interview. “Though our very first performances were an immediate success, the newspaper reviews were brutal. When The New York Times published an article, “The Man Who Dared,” clouds started to gather over me. I even thought they could close my theater at any moment. The official critics referred to me as almost a madman. They said Eifman’s choreography was mere pornography. I never wanted that. For me, the ballet is sexual by its very nature, since the interlacing of two bodies, male and female, creates the uniqueness of our genre. Today I am happy I held out and didn’t emigrate, preserving my theater. However, in twenty-five years we never obtained our own premises in St. Petersburg.”

Russian Hamlet, or the Son of Catherine the Great is a tragic performance based on the music by Ludwig Van Beethoven and Gustav Mahler. This is a narration about the rule of Catherine II (the period of her conspiracy against Peter III). The heir to the throne happened to witness how his mother had his father killed. Prince Paul drew a parallel between his own fate and the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet performing before the queen, king, and their guests a scene from his play within a play called Mousetrap. The analogy with Shakespeare’s hero is completed with the appearance of Paul’s father’s ghost in the royal chambers. The Kyiv audience will see the ballet in its original St. Petersburg version. The show features Vera Arbuzova, Yelena Kuzmina, Igor Markov, et. al. 54 people and two carriages with scenery and costumes are to arrive to Kyiv. After the performance in Ukraine’s capital, Eifman’s troupe will perform Russian Hamlet in Kharkiv.