The Australian Ballet announced Monday that it has partnered with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago to develop a new ballet based on Leo Tolstoy’s famously passionate “Anna Karenina.”
The partnership will team the Russian composer Ilya Demutsky, who has been commissioned to compose a new score, with the Russian choreographer Yuri Possokhov. A former Bolshoi dancer, Possokhov currently is choreographer in residence at the San Francisco Ballet.
Plans call for “Anna Karenina” to premiere in Chicago in October, 2018 and then be first performed in Australia during the Australian Ballet’s 2020 season.
The Australian Ballet said the project had been conceived jointly by David McAllister of the Australian Ballet and Ashley Wheater of the Joffrey. Although now both artistic directors of their respective companies, the two worked together as dancers in the 1980s.
