Vladimir Nabokov once chided in a brief parenthesis that “Anna Karenina,” the great novel by Tolstoy, “should in fact be transliterated without the closing ‘a’ – she was not a ballerina.” Well, at least not until now. Boris Eifman’s new ballet, which premiered at the City Center on Tuesday, places the famous heroine in pointe shoes after all. Through a series of sparsely lit, ornately staged episodes, Mr. Eifman follows her self-destructive passion from the first adulterous encounter with Count Vronsky to her fated end in front of an oncoming train.

But he is less concerned with specific plot points in his adaptation of the story than in creating a psychological portrait of Anna as the divided woman. He outfits her in allegorical dress, along with an impressive number of corps dancers, in an attempt to dramatize the two sides of human nature: white for the stabilizing, if somewhat hypocritical, conventions of society, particularly her role as mother and wife; and black for the corruptible pleasure of the senses. At one point she arrives at an assignation in a white dress and black shawl, but there is very little in the choreography that would indicate real ambiguity.

In the gilded ballroom of Zinovy Margolin’s set design, Mr. Eifman hurriedly advances Tolstoy’s mid-19th century Russia to include all the trappings of fin-de-siecle decadence. He generalizes the theme of adultery in showy vignettes that follow one another discontinuously until the actions of the main characters are dangerously close to erasing any trace of the original tale.

Whereas Tolstoy’s prose is lucid, Mr. Eifman’s choreography is blunt and over-determined. In the opening ensemble piece, we see anonymous socialites whirling and kicking. He is fond of sleek, leggy movements and sharp turns of phrase. With an admittedly athletic-looking group of tall young dancers, Mr. Eifman makes the most of their sex appeal. They slip into narcissistic combinations that give off the pungent aroma of cologne advertisements.

Next Vronsky, performed by Yuri Smekalov, introduces himself to the audience as the seducer, crawling out of his dark jacket. Looking especially villainous, he climbs on top of Anna (Maria Abashova) in her bed. She stretches her limbs in ecstasy. But Anna soon collapses and tumbles off the mattress. Gripping the bed frame, she curls up protectively on the floor. In the solos and duets, Mr. Eifman often trades the elongated classical movements of the corps for the dramatic exposition of modernist contractions. In the end, however, the two amount to the same thing, equally stylized and lacking in substance.

Staging is occasionally used to meaningful ends. In order to illustrate the growing distance between Karenin and Anna, they move around two beds – his an ascetic couch, really, and hers a large canopied bed. They are separated by the length of the stage, but they move in unison.

The music throughout is an arrangement of passages from Tchaikovsky’s Suites and Symphonies, each culled for their individual magnificence. But placed together, every scene sounds equally climactic and urgent.

At the true climax, the music is replaced altogether by hollow industrial sounds. Anna disappears into a coffin, returning as a ghost in a white full-body leotard. A macabre dance of skeletal figures follows. They contort in the strobe effect of Gleb Filshtinsky’s lighting design. Karenin’s duet with Anna’s corpse is perhaps the most successful choreography. Entombed in a harsh light, she rigidly dips with Mr. Galichanin’s forearm at her throat. She floats in his arms with flexed feet as he paces forward.

Afterward, the architectural lintel in the background is transformed into a streetscape, and finally a railroad bridge. Leather-capped furies appear, marching in rhythm, their white arms moving up and down like engine cylinders. Together they imitate a vast locomotive, finally consuming Anna.

Mr. Eifman has attempted to penetrate the hearts and minds of literary characters in the past, such as “The Karamazovs,” “Russian Hamlet,” and “Don Juan & Moliere,” translating their messages into the language of dance. But in this production, which could have been 20 minutes, the message is similarly consumed by an abundance of needless choreography and big-budget effects.

Until May 29 (130 W. 56th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, 212-581-1212).