Having a woman play a man seems a trendy choice in this day and age. But that doesn’t make American Ballet Theater’s production of “Crime and Punishment” particularly fashionable. It is, however, punishing. Where is its drive?
In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s gripping 19th-century novel, Raskolnikov is a desperately poor university student who commits a horrific double murder. If only this “Crime and Punishment,” by the choreographer Helen Pickett and the director James Bonas, came close to its dramatic fervor.
An all-too-rare case of the company giving a full-length ballet its world premiere in New York City, “Crime and Punishment” was a risk. Story ballets are hard to pull off, and that’s true here. The fussy, micro attention to character development eclipses the expanse and sweep of a bigger picture: Who deserves to live or die?
The winding torque of a spine, the pull between lightness and gravity, the aggressive thrust of a kick — they all become more cartoonish than emotional. There’s so little movement variety that the whole thing drags. At some point, you stop wondering if Raskolnikov will be caught and start praying that he will. What’s taking so long?
Raskolnikov is played by Cassandra Trenary with the kind of bold, emotional commitment she’s known for. With a character like this, gender isn’t as important as the vehemence of the body in all of its pain and rage. (The role will also be danced by Herman Cornejo and Breanne Granlund.) But with few exceptions, Trenary’s frenetic, contorted shapes wash over the stage — back and forth, like windshield wipers — with momentum but little range.
The two-act ballet — 20 scenes, plus a prologue and an epilogue — is full of stops and starts. Pickett, a former dancer with William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt, has a history of collaborating with Bonas; they have produced versions of “The Crucible” and “Madame Bovary.”
In “Crime and Punishment,” gestures, often overly exaggerated and anchored by emphatic hands and arms, replace the idea of traditional mime. Instead of giving the work a contemporary look, however, this tips it into silent movie territory. All too often, movement phrases are whipped into high speed or stilted to convey pained emotions.
The setting jumps around: An industrial Soviet scene with Citizens (28 members of the corps de ballet), moving in rigid unison, suddenly transforms into a jazzy bar scene out of a 1950s movie. The commissioned score by Isobel Waller-Bridge is cinematic and tethered to the ballet’s movie-like treatment, which is explained in detail in the program. Supertitles by Tal Yarden, who created the production’s video, appear on a scrim in typewriter font but aren’t helpful in following the story. There are also video flashbacks of the murder of a deceitful pawnbroker, and her half sister — close-ups of hands, a pocket watch and, finally, sheets of projected blood.
The set by Soutra Gilmour considerably diminishes the dancing space of the stage — walls are wheeled around like in a game of three-card monte — but her handsome costumes, along with Jennifer Tipton’s cool, icy lighting, are the most polished parts of the production.
Aside from Raskolnikov and Sonya (SunMi Park), a young prostitute who convinces him to confess, characters — too many to keep straight — include Raskolnikov’s friend Razumikhin (Calvin Royal III) and sister, Dunya (Christine Shevchenko), for whom a romance blooms. All the while Dunya is engaged to the confusingly arrogant Luzhin (Joseph Markey), and when he breaks it off, she has an even worse option lurking in the wings: her former employer, the slimy and unintentionally funny Svidrigailov (James Whiteside).
While Shevchenko was the epitome of elegant restraint, the others fell into one-note interpretations. Even vivid interpreters like Park, whose role required her to transition from a teenage prostitute to an angelic being, struggled. Trenary, full of irritation for the world, sliced her legs through the air with turned-in hips, snaking her back in and out of contraction to convey the illusion of a broken body. Softness was harder for her to project; when, in the epilogue, she quieted down to accept her fate and Sonya’s forgiveness, the drama fizzled and all the buildup, 20 scenes worth, evaporated into thin air.
“Crime and Punishment,” which continues through Sunday, wraps up Ballet Theater’s fall season, which has had its highs and lows. The fall gala honored the great ballerina Natalia Makarova and her staging of “The Kingdom of the Shades,” with a not-so-great video presentation that dragged, as did much of the evening’s stream of excerpts.
On other programs, the repertory was an improvement over past years (and certainly a relief from the familiar reel of story ballets performed at the Metropolitan Opera House during the company’s summer season). But the same couldn’t always be said of the performances.
Daniel Camargo, opposite a lovely Park in Twyla Tharp’s “Sinatra Suite,” was strangely vacant — subtlety is one thing, but he seemed to be floundering. George Balanchine’s “Ballet Imperial” was a bit better this season, lifted by Chloe Misseldine, who here and in his “Sylvia Pas de Deux,” danced with a vivacity that elongated her line farther, astonishingly so. But the leads in “Imperial,” Shevchenko, with a glued-on smile and downward eyes, and an overly ardent Royal, chose mannerism over musicality.
A delight was Alexei Ratmansky’s “Neo,” originally choreographed as a digital work in 2021. Zippy and funny, with a fresh take on virtuosity by two stellar casts — Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside in one, and Catherine Hurlin and Jarod Curley in another — “Neo,” with music by Dai Fujikura, featured Sumie Kaneko playing the traditional Japanese shamisen. It was like a call and response between Kaneko and the dancers whose brave traveling steps and rapid-fire spins tore across the stage. In the end, the couples faced each other to clap their hands in a victorious double high five: a hard-to-pull-off mix of stylish and adorable.
Despite uneven performances, there was still courage to be found in Tharp’s magnificent “In the Upper Room.” The first presentations were on the haggard side — the look, in the beginning, was more dress rehearsal than go for broke — but certain dancers held the stage with attack and vigor: Trenary, Hurlin, Park, Léa Fleytoux and Jake Roxander. Ballet Theater needs “In the Upper Room” in its life as often as possible, not just for its conditioning but for its joyful reminder to its dancers of why they fell in love with ballet in the first place. Fortifying, everlasting and divine, Tharp’s “In the Upper Room” is a work for all time.
American Ballet Theater
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