Eifman Ballet to Bring UK Premiere of RODIN and More to the Coliseum, April 15-19

EIFMAN BALLET, founded by its visionary Artistic Director Boris Eifman 37 years ago and still based in the exquisite Russian city of St Petersburg, returns to London in April with the UK premiere of 'RODIN', based on the life of the sculptor and artist Auguste Rodin, and 'ANNA KARENINA' based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy.

EIFMAN BALLET at the LONDON COLISEUM 2014:

RODIN April 15th, 16th, 17th at 7.30pm

ANNA KARENINA April 19th at 2pm and 7.30pm

Ticket prices: £10 - £65 plus booking fee; concessions available. Box office: www.eno.org or 020 7845 9300.

The Coliseum performances are part of the UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014 organised by the British Council and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs celebrating a wide ranging programme of UK cultural projects taking place across Russia and an unprecedented showcase of Russian culture in the UK.

'Rodin' is dedicated to the creative work and fate of the great sculptors Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel, Rodin's student, lover, and muse. The premiere was held in St Petersburg in November 2011; and has toured to the US and Canada, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and again in St Petersburg in September 2013 as part of the G20 summit official cultural programme.

Boris Eifman: "In our performance, using the language of dance, we talk about passion, inner struggle and despair, all the phenomena of the human spirit that were brilliantly expressed by Rodin and Camille in bronze and marble. Rodin is a reflection on the extreme price that people of genius have to pay for the creation of eternal masterpieces. And of course it's a reflection on those torments and mysteries of creative process that will always be of concern to any artist."

'RODIN' - the cast:

April 15th and 17th: RODIN Oleg Gabyshev
CAMILLE Lyubov Andreyeva
ROSE BEURET Yulia Manjeles
April 16th: RODIN Dmitry Fisher
CAMILLE Aigerim Beketayeva
ROSE BEURET Yulia Manjeles

Set in 2005 to the music of Tchaikovsky 'Anna Karenina' is one of the most successful productions inEifman Ballet's repertoire. It has been performed to critical and public acclaim in Russia, USA, Australia, UK, Germany, Holland, Spain, France and many other countries.

In his Anna Karenina Boris Eifman focuses on the Anna/Karenin/Vronsky love triangle and creates a brilliant example of a theatrical form of psychoanalysis showing the terrible inner struggle between love and lust that's experienced by the central character.

'ANNA KARENINA' cast:

April 19th at 2pm ANNA Yulia Manjeles

KARENIN Denis Klimuk

VRONSKY Sergey Volobuev

April 19th at 7.30pm: ANNA Natalia Povoroznyuk

KARENIN Oleg Markov

VRONSKY Oleg Gabyshev

Tolstoy's novel was originally published in installments 1873-7 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. "For me Anna is a sort of 'shape shifter' with two people living within her," comments Eifman. "Externally she's a high society lady known to her husband Karenin, to her son and to everyone around her. The other is a woman who becomes totally consumed by and immersed in a completely different world of passion when she meets Vronsky."

Boris Eifman (left) founded his independent ballet company in St Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1977. "From the start Boris showed how differently he looked at dance, despite the lack of contact with the outside world and its fast-moving developments," says ballet historian Margaret Willis. "Eifman, with no influence from the West, set out to be different and, despite the huge criticism heaped on him at the beginning, his work was, and continues to be, unique. His aim was to shock his audiences, to make them sit up and see dance from a different perspective. His work is extremely theatrical and combines a good mixture of reality and fantasy; his dancers are all classically trained but he does not give them the 'tricks' of the 'elitist' ballet world which show only the technical abilities of the exponent."