07 December 2025
The number of small production groups in Russia has grown over the past decade, and increasingly contemporary or modern works draw audiences eager to see something new. This is part of the billing strategy for the “Two Sisters” production company who created a one-act dance drama based on Lev Tolstoy’s “Anna Kareninfa”. The performance, called “The Train Will Leave in…” debuted at the Kamenostrov Theatre in Petersburg the first weekend in December. It uses the marketing theme of a departing train, and a black-and-white colour palette with onstage ceramic figures to present a myriad of deep-seated emotions that leaves most viewers spellbound.
Performed by two Honored Artists of Russia, former Mariinsky principal dancer Daria Pavlenko, who has ventured into exploratory contemporary dance forms in recent years, and active Bolshoi principal Vladislav Lantratov, a popular audience favorite in Moscow and abroad, “The Train Will Leave In…” uses abstract symbolic representation of passion, freedom and longing. Yet the core emotions – love, despair and loss – are palpable mainly through Pavlenko’s expert embodiment of Anna.
Pavlenko is first wheeled onstage in the form of a life-size marble statue with hard pieces of her “shell” dress stuck to her. When touched by the sculptor, she breathes –we hear that breath in the soundtrack–and then moves, at first in jerky, uncontrolled, almost robotic gestures, slowly exploring her own arms, hands, face and skin, while the soundtrack depicts the noise of a crowded train station.
Lantratov as Vronsky enters upstage, a vision of purity in a gleaming white officer’s coat under a sole spotlight. He holds an invisible glass up to a toast, and bows his head to kiss an invisible hand at the imaginary social gathering. Anna and Vronsky “see” each other from across the stage, he finally approaches, bends to kiss her hand and she withdraws it trembling. Contact has been made, the inevitable story ignites, and from there, we witness the juxtaposition of passion and love, commitment and freedom, and ultimately life and death throughout the next hour of performance.
The staging of “The Train” uses angles, light, shadow and movement to depict what the absence of words cannot. When Vronsky re-enters, he comes through the audience, up a few stairs center front stage and remains facing upstage, back to the audience for a sequence of gestures with his arm stretched directly behind his back. At this point Pavlenko’s Anna is still in a robotic trance, as if emerging a butterfly emerging from a stone cocoon. When she finally cracks through her ceramic frame, huge pieces of papier-mâché “porcelain” crash to the floor as she inhales, life itself, it seems. Their duet begins as he lifts her barefoot off of the statue’s pedestal into the upstage space. His torso curls, movements undulate, she balances with one leg aloft in écarté, she rubs her head against him, leaning back still hanging onto his hand. As they dance, the movement becomes sweepingly fluid and finally reaches fever pitch in a swinging frenzy on the floor, until they fall asleep from exhaustion in each others’ arms.
But Anna is awakened repeatedly by the phrase “mama” from overhead: duty, the responsibility of motherhood, the love for her son. The fairytale is threatened, although it has just begun. She stands and her face is already changed: anxiety, then fear, then grief and sadness pass over her. She starts to rub her hands on her face and neck until the rubbing becomes frantic – Vronsky grabs her, stops the movement, as if to waken her to reality. It’s a moment demonstrating how close the descent to insanity can be.
The hero and heroine repeatedly walk upstage into a bath of white light and fog in this production. Sets are minimal and symbolic. Near the end, Lantratov faces the audience, opens a mirror compact, and wipes white face paint all over his face. The white of society, the return to the ceramic, stony façade of what’s acceptable, perhaps? Meanwhile Pavlenko’s Anna is giving birth upstage to a child, presumably theirs, which he takes and walks away, ignoring her very existence.
Later, Anna enters with several meters of white fabric extending beyond her waist into the wings. She approaches her son Seryozha with a warm smile that embraces his very aura, as he plays quietly with yes, a train set, on the floor. No sooner does she reach him, than the fabric pulls her back repeatedly. The fabric of –her love, her passion, her desire—appears to pull her away from the very thing she likely values most, her son.
Choreographically, the movements throughout “The Train” support the unusual characterization used in this production: deep pliés, swivels, and a retire passé that ends in a twisted tendu side – the classical lexicon is bent and warped throughout, as “tradition” is thwarted, both literally, and choreographically.
In the end, their connection is lost, but passion remains in Pavlenko’s Anna, while Lantratov’s Vronsky demonstrates that his attention is elsewhere. His internal struggle is also visible: his hands attack his own face and body repeatedly. He salutes mechanically and kisses invisible hands in greeting, but it’s all empty. He exits the stage first, but Pavlenko continues her search, running and falling in place in the final moments of the performance, finally collapsing under a single light with snow falling on her nearly naked form.
Both Lantratov and Pavlenko offer unusual depth of emotion and scope in meaning, rendering the multiple layers of this production comprehensible despite their nearly impossible complexity. Their exhausting onstage journey is a testament to the honesty in their presentation, and the profound acting talent that each possess. It is a blessing to be able to witness these two onstage together in such poignant, momentous roles. With luck, “The Train…” will return to Petersburg again next season.
Photographs by Sila Avvakum.