St. Petersburg State Academic Ballet Theatre of Boris Eifman

A ballet by Boris Eifman
Music: George Gershwin, Franz Schubert, Alban Berg
Sets: Zinovi Margolin
Costumes: Olga Šajšmelašvili
Light: Gleb Filštinski, Boris Eifman

Boris Eifman is one of the world’s greatest choreographers who has created his own unique ballet universe. He is justly known as a “choreographer-philosopher”, but a more subtle definition that accurately captures the aesthetic individuality of the great maestro would be a “choreographer-psychoanalyst”. Rightly believing that the tools of ballet open up truly unlimited research opportunities to the dance creator, Eifman plunges into the unknown depths of the inner worlds of his characters and penetrates the most hidden corners of their subconscious. The ballet Up & Down is the quintessence of the choreographer’s psychoanalytic research. The characters’ ups and downs are set against the background of the magnificent Jazz Age – the unstoppable feast of life. Boris Eifman and his dancers masterfully recreate the era of freedom, sensuality and hedonism and in doing so offer a fundamental message: “A person that forgets his mission and destroys his talent is doomed, and a compromise with the treacherous world full of temptations is always destructive. The ballet Up & Down serves to remind us of the fatal consequences of a man betraying himself.”