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SCRUTINY | The National Ballet’s Anna Karenina Is A Hit With A Couple Of Quibbles

By Paula Citron on June 17, 2025

Heather Ogden and Christopher Gerty in The National Ballet of Canada's Anna Karenina (Photo: Karolina Kuras)
Heather Ogden and Christopher Gerty in The National Ballet of Canada’s Anna Karenina (Photo: Karolina Kuras)

The National Ballet of Canada/Anna Karenina, choreographed by Christian Spuck, Four Seasons Centre, closes Jun. 21. Performances are currently sold out; a limited number of standing room tickets become available at 11 a.m. on the day of each performance. Info here.

I suspect that among the many reasons that Hope Muir deservedly was given the job of artistic director at the National Ballet was that the lady has European connections.

Proof of the pudding came on Saturday night as the company presented the North American premiere of acclaimed German choreographer Christian Spuck’s intriguing ballet Anna Karenina. Now that’s a big get!

Spuck, 56, set the work on Zurich Ballet in 2014 when he was still artistic director of that company. He has since moved on to bigger game, becoming intendant at Berlin State Ballet in 2022.

The Characters

Most choreographers who attempt to distill Leo Tolstoy’s complex 1878 novel into movement concentrate on the major players: the beautiful Anna Karenina, a loving mother but unfulfilled wife (Heather Ogden), her distant, autocratic husband Alexei Karenin (Ben Rudisin), and Anna’s lover, the dashing soldier Count Alexei Vronsky (Christopher Gerty).

The very ambitious Spuck, however, opted to include in his ballet many of the ancillary characters who people Anna’s world, but even if you had read the novel, you really need the scene breakdown thoughtfully provided in the program to figure out who everyone is.

Stiva (Shaakir Muhammad) is Anna’s brother, the pleasure-loving, cheating husband of the long-suffering, loyal Dolly (Tirion Law), who is the elder sister of the young, vivacious Kitty (Brenna Flaherty).

Kitty is smitten with Vronsky and is crushed when he only has eyes for Anna. She finally accepts the hand of the hopelessly in love landowner Konstantin Levin (Mattieu Pagès). Incidentally, Anna and Levin are considered the co-protagonists of the novel.

The third tier of characters include Princess Betsy (Hannah Galway) a friend of Anna’s who hosts the parties considered the most decadent in St. Petersburg, and her Companion (Jason Ferro).

The morally upright prig Countess Lidia Ivanovna (Jenna Savella) becomes Karenina’s confidante after Anna leaves her marriage. Sergei Karenin (Evan McMillan) is Anna’s beloved young son.

Countess Vronskaja (Selene Guerrero-Trujillo) is Vronsky’s socially conscious mother, and Princess Sorokina (Isabella Kinch) is the proper young woman she has chosen for her son after his affair with Anna has ended.

This is just a bare fraction of the characters in the novel, but is it a tad too many folk for a ballet? Spuck has solved this problem in a most interesting way which is detailed below.

Ben Rudisin, Heather Ogden and Christopher Gerty in The National Ballet of Canada's Anna Karenina (Photo: Karolina Kuras)
Ben Rudisin, Heather Ogden and Christopher Gerty in The National Ballet of Canada’s Anna Karenina (Photo: Karolina Kuras)

Themes

What about the plethora of themes that Tolstoy addresses? Spuck has wisely narrowed the focus.

His main concentration is the conflict between societal norms and personal desires, and the consequences of breaking the rules, which ultimately leads to Anna’s isolation and tragic end.

Spuck also touches specifically on love and marriage.

There is also the injustice that transgressions do not bar men from society, but destroy the reputations of women.

Structure

If you strip away all the exterior padding, the basic structure of Spuck’s Anna Karenina is a series of separate storylines told through contrasting duets. That’s how Spuck fits in his abundance of characters. The choreography for these duets, however, seems quite similar. Wide swooping turns, deep back dips, one arm/one toe twirls, the men in crouch spins

I’m not familiar enough with Spuck’s work to know if this is a common feature or a deliberate imposition, but what distinguishes each encounter, one from the other, and between and within couples, is a differentiation of mood, tone, emotional detailing, et cetera.

For example, in the most simplistic of terms, Anna and Vronsky move from tentative (her), to passionate (both), to distancing (him).

Stiva and Dolly are more apart. First, he is uncaring, and she is unhappy, then a reconciliation of sorts, then back to self-centred (him) and resignation (her). While the obsessed Konstantin never changes, Kitty moves from contemptuous to acceptance.

Even Countess Betsy gets her own brief but always self-aware duet with her jealous Companion when he manages to pry her loose from her many admirers.

Often the corps de ballet is in the background, in couples themselves, mirroring the movement, and so reinforcing the central image.

Of course, Spuck’s choreography is much more sophisticated than my brief outlines, but to grasp his basic structure is a key to understanding the foundation of the ballet itself.

Interestingly, it is the romantic music of the great Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff that ties the storylines together. The piano solos are elegantly played by Adrian Oetiker and there are even two melancholy Rachmaninoff songs hauntingly performed live on stage by soprano Emily Rocha.

Heather Ogden in The National Ballet of Canada's Anna Karenina (Photo: Karolina Kuras)
Heather Ogden in The National Ballet of Canada’s Anna Karenina (Photo: Karolina Kuras)

Characters as Individuals and the National Dancers

When alone, characters seem to do a lot of running and walking, but they are also given individualized movement. Spuck, it seems, does have a gift for characterization.

Anna is gracious and warm. Feckless Stiva gets Russian imperial style showy tricks, while Konstantin is all tortured angst. Dolly is withdrawn, even miserable, while the mercurial Kitty is a girl of many moods. Vronsky is confident and self-assured, while Karenin is stiff and formal.

In terms of stage expression, the National dancers are mostly at the top of their game.

Ogden is a senior ballerina who has the wisdom and experience to breathe vibrant life into Anna, and she gives a performance of a lifetime. Her character arc, from nobility to disgrace, is etched indelibly throughout the ballet, and her skill as a splendid actor/dancer is in full flower.

I have long been a champion of Gerty. I even agitated for him to become a principal dancer and was delighted when he was finally granted that honour, but his Vronsky comes up short. All the right moves are there, but I wanted more dash and vigour from him, and he needs to up his chemistry with Ogden. It’s like Gerty’s Vronsky is undercooked, and needs a bit more time in the oven aka more passion.

On the other side of the spectrum, Pagès overacts as the love-consumed Konstantin, but, because in this ballet, more is better than less, he does nail the role of a tormented soul perfectly, particularly in his beautiful solo delineated with his crisp clean lines. Now if he could offload some of his high-octane energy to Gerty, we would have a perfect world.

Casting Law as Dolly is a genuine surprise. One would think that the tiny perfect ballerina would be a Kitty, but her more mature Dolly is dramatic and heartbreaking, built beautifully around the soft lines she paints in space with her wonderfully expressive body.

There are also excellent performances from others in the cast.

A chill descends in the theatre with Rudisin’s rigid, frigid Karenin. Flaherty’s Kitty is an adorable, glowing debutante. Muhammad’s trickster show-off perfectly denotes the careless Stiva, while Galway’s Countess Betsy is the quintessence of narcissism on steroids.

Special Features

Spuck has also created some very memorable standout moments for this ballet.

The graphic sex scene between Anna and Vronsky is certainly gutsy, as is Karenin’s near rape of his wife.

On the lighter side, the beginning of the horse-racing scene is an amusing parody of the “Ascot Gavotte” from My Fair Lady, or so it seems.

And now, I put myself in the position of being very unwoke and sexist, but I don’t care. I am probably speaking for many women in the audience and probably a significant number of men when I say that my favourite scene in the ballet is “In the Country ll”.

It’s body beautiful time as Konstantin joins his bare-chested estate workers in stylized rhythmic movement evoking working with scythes, performed to the persistent insistent taped chords from Witold Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto, 2nd movement. The clever patterned athletic choreography is as alluring as it is mesmerizing.

Other notable features of the ballet are Emma Ryott’s gorgeous period costumes, and Martin Donner’s brilliant collage of stunning sound effects like moving trains and galloping horses.

Artists of The Ballet in The National Ballet of Canada's Anna Karenina (Photo: Karolina Kuras)
Artists of The Ballet in The National Ballet of Canada’s Anna Karenina (Photo: Karolina Kuras)

Music

Speaking of Lutoslawski, Spuck makes judicious use of the Polish composer when he wants edgy atmospheric music.

He also employs a folk influenced miniature by Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsaze for the country wedding of Konstantin and Kitty.

Another single use composer is Georgian Israeli Ioseb Bardanashvili, whose funereal Concerto quasi una Fantasia, 2. Sostenuto, accompanies Anna in her final hours.

Problems — The Set

Which brings us to the loathsome set (Spuck and Jorg Zielinski) and the grainy black and white video design (Tieni Burkhalter).

Picture this.

Four ugly white birch tree trunks. Two off centre miniscule chandeliers. Several awkward wooden platforms that have to be ceremoniously carted on and off the stage to represent train platforms, racing club seating, and so on. An annoying canvas sheet that keeps being pulled across the back of the stage for the unattractive projections of trains and scenery and such like.

In stage design, you can certainly have contrasts, sparseness versus opulence, but they have to say something together. This cheap-looking minimalist wood/canvas concept adds nothing whatsoever to the story except clutter.

Problems — The Beginning

Then there’s the beginning.

Even before the curtain opens we hear the deafening sound of a rushing train. Great effect, right? One associated with Anna’s death? But then the curtain opens, and confusion sets in, and thus, I also have a quarrel with the opening montage.

Everyone is dressed in black, except for an obviously very unhappy young man whom I guessed to be Konstantin. There is a man and a veiled woman with a little boy between them. The Karenin Family? Anna and her husband? Then people begin to shift around, and aspects of a funeral appear, but then the young man keeps running through the crowd.

Very confusing, right?

When the same opening montage reforms at the end of the ballet, it is around Anna’s crumpled body in the middle of the stage. Konstantin is in his own storyline. The veiled lady is Countess Ivanovna.

What purpose does it serve being mysterious at the beginning? Think how much more effective it would be, Mr. Spuck, if we hear the roaring train, the curtain opens, and Anna’s crumpled body is there on the stage?

Final Thoughts

In summary, Spuck does find a way to manage his unwieldy collection of characters, and in essence, gives a primer tour through Tolstoy’s novel, but against an ill-conceived background set.

Nonetheless, there are many great dance opportunities for the company, both soloists and corps de ballet, making Spuck’s Anna Karenina a welcome addition to the National’s repertoire.

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Paula Citron
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