Best bets

[Photo provided to China Daily]

National Theatre of China Drama Dorogaya Yelena Sergeevna

Date: Aug 19-20－9 am

Venue: National Center for the Performing Arts

Price: 100-500 yuan

The lonely, melancholy math teacher Yelena Sergeevna has never thought that on such a cold snowy night, four of her students would have come to celebrate her birthday that she has almost forgotten. More unexpectedly, there is a "game" of youth hidden behind the beautiful flowers. The "game" starts from a key. The teenagers want to use it to unlock the safe which keeps the examination papers, and exchange them with the right answers they have brought. Since they are tenth graders who about to graduate, unsatisfactory graduation examination results will ruin their future. Yelena is the one who keeps the key, and she refuses to give it to her students. As the "game" goes on, dream and reality, truth and lie, passion and indifference, persistence and confusion, rule and free, defense and destruction, past and future, all are fighting against each other. What will it be like tomorrow after the struggle?

[Photo provided to China Daily]

St. Petersburg Eifman Ballet Anna Karenina

Date: Sept 13-14－7:30 pm

Venue: National Centre for the Performing Arts

Price: 160-880 yuan

Boris Eifman's ballet Anna Karenina is a true burst of inner psychological energy and is amazingly precise in delivering emotional impact upon its viewers. By setting aside all secondary storylines in Leo Tolstoy's novel, the choreographer focused on the love triangle among Anna, Karenin and Vronsky. The choreographer said that his ballet speaks not of previous times but of today. The timeless emotional content of the performance and obvious parallels to reality can't leave the contemporary viewers indifferent.