The premiere of Anna Karenina staged by Maxim Sevagin in Moscow

From June 25 to 28, 2026, the premiere series of Anna Karenina, a ballet set to music by Ilya Demutsky and staged by Maxim Sevagin, took place on the Main Stage of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre. The premiere was presented as part of the 2026 Cherry Forest Open Arts Festival.

The production made a strong impression and was memorable not only for its visual expressiveness, but also for its unexpected directorial ideas. The finale is especially striking: it contains an unusual directorial solution that one would not want to reveal in advance, but it is precisely this choice that gives the production additional sharpness and makes the ending unexpectedly distinctive and unlike other interpretations.

At times, the choreography feels like a reflection of current stage trends: it is built from sharp, effective and emphatically contemporary movement choices. There is energy and relevance in this, although at certain moments one has the impression of slight overload, as if the choreographic language is trying to say too much at once.

At the same time, some episodes reveal a closeness to the stylistic world of Alexei Ratmansky and Yuri Possokhov — with their nervous energy, fragmentation and desire to unite dramatic action with expressive, almost cinematic plasticity.

Visually, the production makes a powerful impression: the costumes are beautiful and contribute precisely to the atmosphere. The music functions not merely as accompaniment, but as an independent dramaturgical element, heightening the inner tension of the performance. The score contains lyrical, clearly defined themes that help sustain the emotional line of the entire story.

"This music was written eight years ago, but for Maxim Sevagin’s production it was important for me not simply to transfer it into a new performance, but to rethink it completely. I was ready to change things, add new material, remove something — and as a result, in my view, we created an entirely new production. I was interested in how music can push a choreographer toward different stage decisions: Maxim heard in it things that I had not originally intended at all. This is the living process of collaboration, when the score begins to exist in a new way," composer Ilya Demutsky emphasises.

Kitty, performed by Elena Solomyanko, appears especially delicate and ethereal: her image contains fragility, light and an almost weightless youthfulness. Evgeny Zhukov’s Levin, by contrast, is filled with expressive character and inner certainty — a living, complete, searching hero who does not lose his ground.

Natalia Somova, in the role of Anna Karenina, reveals the tragedy and drama of the heroine through restrained yet tense emotionality, in which a sense of inevitability gradually intensifies.

German Borsai presents Vronsky as a man of inner conflict: his role is built around the turmoil of the soul, a wavering between passion, duty and the impossibility of finding balance.

Overall, this is a production that offers much to observe and much to think about after the performance. It does not leave an impression of randomness: even its debatable decisions come together into a coherent stage experience. The impression after watching it remained vivid and engaged; the production certainly deserves to remain in the theatre’s repertoire.

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Text: Nina Teseiko

Photo: Theatre Press Department