Legacy of Donn

Boris Eifman has been running the sole contemporary dance company in Russia for 25 years. This lonely pioneering has had a curious effect. For much of that time, he was cut off from the West.

The only source of information was visiting dancers. As becomes rapidly apparent in his expressionist drama swirling around Tchaikovsky's psyche, one of those visitors was Jorge Donn.

Donn is a forgotten man today, but in his prime he was a glamour figure, half dramatic-dancer, half celebrity icon. He was Béjart's leading dancer throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and it is his persona that has somehow been transformed into Tchaikovsky, traumatised artist.

We begin at Tchaikovsky's deathbed. Tchaikovsky (Albert Galichanin) is watching death approach. As it does, scenes from his past appear before him: the evil fairy Carabosse from his ballet Sleeping Beauty, his wife (Yelena Kuzmina), whom he married in an attempt to deny his homosexuality, his patron, Nadezhda von Meck (Vera Arbuzova). And, threading his way through all, his double, his alter ego, his troubled soul (the impressive Alexei Turko).

They dance a theatrically inspired mirror-image pas de deux and suddenly there we are in Donn territory: all bouffant blond hair, bare chest and, I'm sorry to say, turquoise Lycra trousers.

It is easy to be led astray, however, by the superficial glitz of Eifman's imagination. Underneath is a serious choreographer, extremely gifted musically (although the various recordings of Tchaikovsky, all with different tape hiss and differing resonances, do him no favours).

The final scene, Tchaikovsky in a gambling fever spread-eagled on a baize table, could be a meretricious parody of Kurt Jooss - the father of expressionist dance-theatre. Instead it is an artful homage that never allows the audience to be sidetracked from the drama that is being played out before them.

Eifman's dancers do not let him down. They are well trained, and entirely committed to his vision. Alexei Turko, in particular, is not only a sinister doppelganger, but has a long, lovely line, with stretched, elegant feet. He has the enviable ability to make you want to look at him whatever he is doing. Eifman allows him to shine in his own way, as he allows all his dancers their theatrical moments in the sun.

Many choreographers today never know what it is to have a vision. Eifman's is not one that I share, but it is serious, and worthy of respect nonetheless.