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Having worked for the Kirov and the Maly Ballets, Boris Eifman left to found his own company in 1977. Eifman proceeded to confound Soviet authorities by systematically breaking every tenet of the Russian classical dance canon. His work, standing apart from his contemporaries in its constant emphasis on theatre, drama, spectacle, narrative and literature was, of course, an instant hit. Eifman's work now regularly plays to packed houses in New York. Set against a brutal backdrop of Soviet revolutionary artistic oppression, Red Giselle charts the rise and fall of a gifted, doomed ballerina forced into exile and eventual madness by her art and by the society around her. Based on the true story of Olga Spessivtzeva, Red Giselle was created in 1997 to a score by Adam, Bizet, Tchaikovsky and Schnitke.