Editor’s Pick: The Joffrey Ballet’s ‘Anna Karenina’ at the KenCen
The Joffrey returns to the Kennedy Center with the full-length story ballet, 'Anna Karenina.'
Named after Robert Joffrey, the acclaimed Joffrey Ballet was co-founded by Joffrey’s partner Gerald Arpino, who also took over as the company’s artistic director after Joffrey’s death from AIDS-related complications in 1988.
Arpino subsequently moved the organization from New York to Chicago and became a prominent fixture in the Windy City’s thriving cultural scene until his death due to prostate cancer in 2008.
In the years since, the Joffrey Ballet has successfully carried on its founders’ legacies, advancing and premiering new innovative and boundary-breaking work developed with their spirits in mind.
The company has routinely brought its popular take on the evergreen The Nutcracker to the Kennedy Center in December. But aside from that famed production, the Joffrey hasn’t performed a full-week engagement at the Kennedy Center in more than 25 years.
The company makes a triumphant return with Anna Karenina, a full-length story ballet adapted and told through a contemporary lens to explore the complex politics of family, religion, morality, and gender.
A co-production with The Australian Ballet, Anna Karenina is visionary Ukrainian-born choreographer Yuri Possokhov’s take on Leo Tolstoy’s 19th-century epic tragedy of desire and passion focused on a married aristocrat who finds herself caught in a life-changing affair with grave consequences.
The ballet features music by Russian composer Ilya Demutsky, which will be performed live at the Kennedy Center by the venue’s Opera House Orchestra. The creative team also includes Emmy-winning and Tony-nominated set and costume designer Tom Pye and renowned lighting designer David Finn. The ballet is described as a work of “vivaciously intricate movement.”
Performances run through April 9. Kennedy Center Opera House. Tickets are $39 to $139. Visit www.kennedy-center.org or call 202-467-4600.
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