CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Review by Celia Ipiotis

To help the audience decipher the complexities of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s tragic novel Crime and Punishment, choreographer Helen Pickett along with James Bonas ( Direction and Treatment), projected descriptive text to introduce scenes. That decision suggests questions about the choreographer’s ability to illuminate the literary concept through movement. 

In short, Crime and Punishment penetrates the psyche of Raskolnikov, a destitute student who battles against class inequities and fatefully chooses to commit two murders. Although he escapes incarceration due to a false confession, Raskolnikov snaps from the weight of his guilt and moral ambiguity.

Built on two different casts, Herman Cornejo, one of this generation’s finest dance actors, starred as Raskolnikov on the second night. Convulsed with anger, and frustration, his gestures compound the sense of angst: clenched fists swipe down, punch up and jerk into his torso. 

Every move pulls into his pained center–he’s always hunching over, and never able to fully straighten out. To say he gives 200% of himself, is to minimize Cornejo’s commitment and determination to force the choreography into readable passages. Tightening his body into a bundle, he spits out barrel turns, and spins; punching the air then running hither and yon. Awkwardly, dancers employ pedestrian style gestures to imitate spoken words. Unlike the lyricism of ballet  mime that flows out of the port de bras, these gestures are large, looking like airport workers guiding planes onto the ramps. 

Pickett fares better with the large crowd scenes. When the 28 member corps’ movements accordion in and out, the citizens) the central action in the manner of an ancient Greek chorus. Stage environments created by set and costume designer, Soutra Gilmour, are designated by three giant rectangular wood boxes on wheels. Dancers in jumpsuits push the blocks into arrangements that suggest various indoor and outdoor locations. Videography by Tal Yarden project close up images of the  foes targeted by Raskolnikov. Ultimately, they resemble villains from an old black and white, keystone cops type film. Underneath it all is a an enticing cinematic score by Isobel Waller-Bridge shaped around impressive percussion interludes deftly conducted by Ormsby Wilkins.

Raskolnikov’s good friend Razumikhin (Aron Bell) demonstrates his strong classical line in some of the ballet’s most expensive movement sequences. Cartoonish gestures describe the characteristics of the remaining men including Dunya’s sneering, haughty fiancee Luzhin (Jacob Clerico); or the icky, spidery Svidrigailov (Patrick Frenette), Dunya’s (Catherine Hurlin) former employer and the stumbling Marmeladov (Alexei Agoudine), a drunken former bureaucrat.

For the most part, the women break out of the general tenor of the claustrophobic choreography.  Raskolnikov’s devoted sister Dunya, Catherine Hurlin and mother Pulcheria, (Claire Davison) express concern for Raskolnikov through a much richer vocabulary that unfolds from the center and breathes through long arabesques and suspended turns. Additionally, Marmeladov’s daughter Sonya, (Skylar Brandt) embraces her humiliations with clarity and warmth.

When the ballet ended, Cornejo ran on stage, raising his right fist in the air declaring a hard won success.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis