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RED GISELLE

Ballet in two acts
Ballet choreographed by Boris Eifman, music by P. Tchaikovsky, A. Schnittke, G. Bizet
Characters
Ballerina
Chekist
Teacher
Partner
Friend
Women’s class, French class, festival, chekists, the Wilis, triumph, peasants, Charleston, retinue
I action II action
Revolutionary Petrograd. A classical dance lesson is in progress in the ballet school of the former imperial theatre. A strict and pedantic Teacher marks out the one ballet dancer, whose perfect dance and mysterious aura embodies his ideal of beauty. A glittering auditorium. The Ballerina’s performance garners everyone’s delight. A representative of the new authority, a Chekist, is among her admirers. It is not only the Ballerina’s excellent dancing that he is drawn to. His crude force and powerful embrace suppress her will. The Chekist brings the Ballerina into his own, unknown world, where the debauchery of the revolutionary crowd turns into a mad feast of destruction. And for a brief moment, she reigns over this feast, forgetting her Teacher’s maxims. However, the spiritual values instilled in her by the Teacher prevail over the drug of destruction. The Ballerina returns to her Teacher and his ballet class. The new authority rules the theatre now: severe and aggressive, it suppresses everything in its way. The white Ballerinas must now become an obedient instrument of the red ideology. The teacher is desperate. It is unbearable, but he doesn’t have the power to change anything. The Ballerina and the Chekist are bound by their complicated relationship, which is full of attraction and rejection, passion and misunderstanding.
The Chekist lets the Ballerina join the emigrants leaving Russia forever.

A ballet class in the Parisian Grand Opera. A rehearsal of a famous dancer and choreographer. His dancing techniques are unfamiliar to the Ballerina, but his inspiring talent wins her over. The dancer becomes her Partner, their triumphal success is guaranteed. Her feelings for her Partner are not reciprocated. Her unrequited love and her loneliness in an alien world aggravate the symptoms of her mental imbalance. The Ballerina tries to forget her woes in the jovial atmosphere of Paris. But the ghosts of the past haunt her even here. The vestiges of the red revolution and delusional visions of the Chekist give her no peace. Even her favourite role of Giselle, which amazes the audiences and brings her worldwide acclaim, cannot bring her peace of mind. She shall follow Giselle’s fate: the betrayal of her loved one, madness. Mirrors shatter the great Ballerina’s sanity. Madness seems a welcome salvation, an escape into the glittering world “of the other side of the mirror”.