I didn’t need suspense though. It’s true that Fyodor Dostoevksy’s Crime and Punishment is partly a cat and mouse game (will the murderer Raskolnikov get pinned for his crime?), but its thrust is more philosophical: can he live with himself either way? His oppressive guilt, confession, and spiritual conversion are the salient points. But Pickett and Bonas were less invested in these emotional quandaries; they went for storyline over feeling in their “Crime and Punishment,” forgetting to home in on what makes the medium of ballet special.

This was frustrating, because Pickett and Bonas’s idea to balleticize Dostoevsky’s classic novel was a great one, even though Bonas told the New York Times reporter Brian Seibert that it was “sort of ludicrous” in the pre-press. I completely disagree: if Raskolnikov’s existential despair and spiritual conversion are not the stuff of ballet, then I don’t know what it is. These themes are conveyable even in plotless works: like the Melancholic section of Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments” or the Preghiera of his “Mozartiana.” Ballet, like music, can be an excellent vehicle for the transmission of emotional states; it is not the best choice for plot minutiae. “Crime and Punishment” dealt more in the latter, and the dancing often felt shoehorned into the libretto. Most of the two-hour work consisted of small-scale pantomime. 

A lot of this pantomime was very well done. When Cassandra Trenary, as Raskolnikov, waited for Detective Porfiry (a dignified Thomas Forster) in his office and defiantly parked herself in his chair, it was great. She was like a teenage boy acting out in detention when the headmaster steps out of the room. When Christine Shevchenko, as Raskolnikov’s sister Dunya, gripped her upper neck and ear when she learned of her brother’s guilt, it was a nice touch—as if the spot where she heard the news physically hurt. Both of Dunya’s villainous suitors had well-drawn tics. Joseph Markey, as her pompous and transactional fiancé Luzhin, had shifty knees. James Whiteside, as the oily Svidrigailov who tries to blackmail Dunya into marriage, had snaky legs. Whiteside’s getup, a brown satin shirt open almost to the navel, was straight out of Boogie Nights. Soutra Gilmour did the minimalist sets and slightly less minimalist costumes. Her long coats looked good—trés Siberian chic—until they wound around the dancers’ legs during turns. It seemed that the minor character of Zamyotov (João Menegussi), Porfiry’s deputy, was included purely to hold Forster’s coat while he coupé jetéd.