Boris Eifman is living proof that an artist doesn’t have to be a tormented genius in order to create a work about one. Or, in the case of Eifman’s ballet Rodin, two.
 
Rodin is the first of a brace of full-length dramatic narrative ballets that the Russian choreographer is presenting at the London Coliseum this week as part of UK-Russian Year of Culture 2014, an exchange between the British Council and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Premiered in St Petersburg in 2011, the ballet’s subject is the life, loves and creative process of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin and particularly his complicated relationship with mistress and muse Camille Claudel. A sculptor of greatness in her own right, and a quarter-century younger than the married Rodin, after their break-up Claudel spent the last three decades of her life in a mental institution.  
 
Ensconced in the offices of his London PR, and speaking mainly via an interpreter, Eifman (pronounced, for the record, AFE-man) is an avuncular 67 year-old whose beard and curly hair are more salt than pepper. He refers to his Rodin as ‘a story of love and tragedy.’ He describes the passion between the two sculptors as ‘beautiful but also horrendous and overwhelming, and yet because of it the world can still enjoy their creations.’
 
Eifman naturally recognises the parallel between dance and sculpture. ‘Rodin’s idea was to fix this body into an object and keep it for the ages,’ he says. ‘My purpose with this ballet is to reveal the beauty and secrets of the human body, but I would like to show this body in the process of movement.’
 
The other Eifman opus being imported to London is his equally ‘psycho-emotional’ 2005 adaptation of the classic novel Anna Karenina, first seen here in 2012. While acknowledging that many choreographers use literature as a source for their dance productions, Eifman believes his take on Tolstoy’s tragic (again) and titular heroine is unique. ‘What I’m trying to do is not re-tell a story we already know but bring a new angle to it, as if you’re reading between the lines. The idea is to provoke a thought by telling a story. And in a story about passion what can be better tool than the human body?’
 
Passion and tragedy could be deemed the twin poles of Eifman’s art, and the foundation of his success on the global stage. He renders in a sometimes spectacularly theatrical fashion the dark complexities of human relations, encouraging his dancers to push classical technique into an often anguished realm of acrobatic exertion. It’s a style Eifman has developed during the 37 years since forming his eponymous company, but one that wasn’t initially appreciated in his homeland.
 
Eifman looks back on his company’s first ten years of existence as ‘a huge challenge.’ What he meant to do was provide a truthfully modern alternative to Russian ballet traditions – drastically different in terms of its dramatic expression, perhaps, but without abandoning the rigours of the classical code. Instead the Soviet regime branded him a dissident while critics and audiences dismissed his work as pornographic rather than artistic. ‘There was a lot at stake,’ says Eifman. ‘I was refused visas for travel and had trouble finding finances. People from the government tried to provoke me into going away. Any person under such pressure would have had thoughts of leaving. But I started asking myself if whether I as a person brought up in Russian culture could be creatively successful somewhere else? It was more than appealing to go but I knew it was more important to stay.’ Why? ‘Because I felt like God gave me a gift that it was my responsibility to implement, and it was best to apply this gift in St Petersburg. And so I made a firm decision that I was ready to be destroyed, but if I had the chance to survive it would be worth it.’
 
Retrospectively Eifman sees that ‘being neglected and in isolation had actually allowed me to become stronger, and to save and stick to my identity.’ But there were, of course, bigger forces at play than even the tenacious will of one man. Along came the policy reforms of perestroika, circa 1987, and everything changed. ‘All of a sudden,’ recalls Eifman in a tone that still betrays a degree of amazement, ‘I went from being a dissident to someone who matches new trends in art.’
 
Nowadays, even in the conflicted ‘New Russia,’ he’s finally happy not by resting on the laurels that eventually came his way but by forging ahead with fresh creative plans. ‘Right now it’s an ideal state for my theatre. My company is based in my favourite city, St Petersburg, but it travels all over the world. On a huge level I can create whatever I want, with no one dictating themes, topics or subjects. People understand, support and sponsor me and allow me to continue to develop.’  
 
Today Eifman and his team maintain a repertoire of work – titles include Onegin, The Seagull, Tchaikovsky, Red Giselle and I, Don Quixote - for a company of fifty dancer-actors, most of whom are of Russian origin (although he’s keen to recruit new members internationally). Apart from this creative bread and butter there are two projects that require Eifman’s attention, both tied in with any artistic legacy he might want to provide the Russian people or dance ecology generally. One is the Dance Academy. Focusing on fostering a thorough dance education especially for children (starting at age seven) from deprived backgrounds, this municipally-funded school opened in September last year in a gleaming new building in the Petrogradskaya area of St Petersburg on the banks of the Neva River. Currently it looks after 90 pupils but could potentially handle up to 300.
 
Eifman’s other ‘big deal’ is a federally-funded Dance Palace, a multi-purpose education and performing arts facility to be constructed in the same vicinity of the city. Set to open in 2016 (although more realistically, perhaps, the following year), the Palaces’ three-fold aim is to cater to the needs of Eifman’s company, other dance-based individuals or groups in Russia and artists and possible collaborators from abroad.
 
It’s all very inspiring, particularly for a boy born in the Siberian mountains into a family that toiled in a military factory. Eifman claims he was always ‘a bouncy child. I started dancing before I started walking. It was easier to express something through movement than words – a way of talking through dance that developed into the necessity of telling stories. It felt right, and it was also a way out.’ He began dance training in his pubescence, having secured a small scholarship that enabled him to study professionally in his beloved St Petersburg.
 
Eifman’s subsequent choreographic tendencies seem to have been innate. These days he likes nothing more than to be in a studio surrounded by like-minded people capable of ‘representing the echo of my imagination. In the end the director and the dancers are completely honest with each other. It’s a full collaboration based on trust. There must be a degree of chemistry between us. It’s like being in love.’
 
Eifman Ballet is at the London Coliseum 15-19 April. 020 7845 9300. eno.org