Truth in Consequences: Anna Karenina Mesmerizes at the National Ballet of Canada

Heather Ogden and Ben Rudisin in Anna Karenina. (Photo: Karolina Kuras.)

Christian Spuck’s Anna Karenina made its North American debut with the National Ballet of Canada on June 13, launching a sold-out week-long run at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre and marking a major addition to the company’s repertoire. First staged in Zürich in 2014, Spuck’s adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 novel distills its epic sweep into a series of charged encounters, shaped by choreography that fuses classical line with contemporary weight and dramatic urgency. Spuck, now artistic director of Staatsballett Berlin, brings a focus on the psychological to choreography that is both fluid and inherently dramatic.

The score, anchored by Rachmaninoff and complemented by Lutosławski, Tsintsadze and Bardanashvili, is more than accompaniment – it is the ballet’s emotional engine. Under Matthew Rowe’s baton, the orchestra shifts from lush romanticism to brittle modernism, setting the pace for each scene from the fevered rush of romance to the cold clarity of consequence. Adrian Oetiker’s piano solos bring intimacy to Anna’s private moments while soprano Emily Rocha’s live performances of Rachmaninoff onstage add a haunting, human presence. Martin Donner’s sound collages – trains, horses – and the persistent chords of Lutosławski’s concerto in the estate scenes give the ballet a cinematic pulse.

Visually, the production is striking. A tracking curtain serves as both a defining boundary and a screen for ingenious projections, carving the stage into corridors and salons or dissolving space entirely. Birch trunks, shifting platforms and Emma Ryott’s 19th-century costumes – muted at first, then revealing flashes of colour—create a world that is both opulent and precarious. Martine Gebhardt’s lighting and Tieni Burkhalter’s video design shift the atmosphere from salon to snowstorm in an instant. The close-up of a moving train, projected at the beginning and again in the final act, becomes the story’s gathering force, marking the irrevocable moment of Anna’s demise.

Heather Ogden, as Anna, leads a cast fully engaged with Spuck’s vision. Her performance is volatile and vulnerable: limbs unfurling, skirts flaring, her movement alternating between expansiveness and constraint as Anna’s world shifts from possibility to confinement. As witnessed on opening night, Ogden’s Anna is not passive – she is propelled by desire, jealousy and regret, her choices visible in every phrase of movement. The sex pas de deux with Christopher Gerty’s Vronsky is unflinching in its physicality—passionate, raw, charged with abandon and risk. Ben Rudisin’s cuckolded Karenin is defined by restraint, his heartbreak contained in small, precise gestures that say more than any outburst.

Heather Ogden and Christopher Gerty. (Photo: Karolina Kuras.)

The supporting cast is equally vivid. Matthieu Pagès’ Levin grounds the parallel plot with a group sequence that blends classical form and contemporary dynamism: arched backs, spiralling torsos and rhythmic, almost athletic movement that evokes both labour and longing. Brenna Flaherty’s Kitty traces a clear arc from innocence to maturity. Secondary couples –among them Shaakir Muhammad and Tirion Law as the quarrelling Dolly and Stiva – add dramatic texture and complexity to the ensemble, alongside Hannah Galloway as Princess Betsy Tverskaya and Jason Ferro as her companion. These subplots shape Anna’s world, sometimes as society’s chorus, sometimes as silent witnesses, always reinforcing the ballet’s emotional landscape.

What distinguishes this Anna Karenina is its intelligence – its refusal to settle for easy sentiment or spectacle for its own sake. Spuck’s choreography is attentive to character and the fallout of each decision; the tragedy, when it comes, is devastating not because it is loud but because it is inevitable. The final scene offers no consolation: a crowd in funereal black, a mother substitute roughly handling Anna’s son—who will doubtless carry the tragedy into the next generation.

The National Ballet’s artistic director, Hope Muir, opted to replace John Neumeier’s version of Anna Karenina, which entered the company’s repertoire in 2018 to mixed reviews – a move that stirred debate. But Spuck’s interpretation is the stronger choice. It avoids spectacle for spectacle’s sake, instead offering a ballet of choices, repercussions and the high cost of desire, realized by a company dancing at the height of its powers.

– Deirdre Kelly is a Toronto-based journalist, author and internationally recognized dance critic and style writer on staff at The Globe and Mail newspaper from 1985 to 2017. She writes for Dance Magazine in New York, the Dance Gazette in London, and NUVO in Vancouver, and is a contributor to the International Dictionary of Ballet and AWOL: Tales for Travel-Inspired Minds. The best-selling author of Paris Times Eight and Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, she is a two-time recipient (2020 and 2014) of Canada’s Nathan Cohen Prize for outstanding critical writing. In 2017, she joined York University as Editor of the award-winning The York University Magazine where she is also the publication’s principal writer. In 2023, she published her latest book, Fashioning The Beatles: The Looks That Shook The World.