Anna Karenina

About

Christian Spuck’s ballet of Tolstoy’s classic places a 19th‑century story of desire and social constraint in a lucid, dance‑driven narrative. A largely classical vocabulary unfolds amid birch forests, snowfields, and glittering St. Petersburg salons, set against austere palace spaces that expose emotional isolation. Video projections focus the eye, foreshadow tragedy, and externalize Anna’s inner turbulence, while concrete onstage actions—argument, intimacy, joy, and despair—keep the drama immediate and legible. Musically, the work draws primarily on Sergei Rachmaninov and Witold Lutosławski: lush late‑Romantic sonorities are set against unsettling modern textures to reveal the fracture between outward spectacle and inward crisis. The piano becomes a timbral voice for Anna, amplifying her private thought and conflict within the public glare.