How do you turn a 19th century classic Russian novel into a dance piece? Kunji Mark Ikeda, a Calgary dancer, choreographer and actor has been trying to answer that since he read Fydor Dosteovsky’s classic thriller Crime and Punishment 15 years ago. Calgary audiences will be able to see whether or not Ikeda succeeded when Crm & Pnshmnt has its world premiere at the High Performance Rodeo this week at the Pumphouse Theatre. So how do you turn a 19th century Russian novel into a contemporary dance piece? "About eight years of work," said Ikeda at a media call in mid-January. He said the work started at a Banff Centre residency in 2019, when he worked with Calgary playwright and actor Ellen Close as a dramaturge to help develop a script. Crime & Punishment tells the story of Raskolnikov, a St. Petersburg graduate student who murders his landlord (and a second person). Raskolnikov is handsome, intellectual and socially mobile to a certain extent and he’s not the typical murder suspect. The killing sets in motion a series of interviews with police inspector Porfiry, a detective who is kind of clumsy and seems disorganized but who has a talent for getting suspects to reveal information. Porfiry was the character that partly inspired Peter Falk’s Det. Columbo on the popular NBC series of the 1970s. Raskolnikov is pretty smart too, and it appears he may have committed the perfect crime -- except that he knows what he did. Ikeda’s adaptation combines dance with narration (by Val Duncan) to tell the story. Pandemic shutdown After presenting a series of “best-of” scenes at a Banff Centre residency in 2019, Ikeda -- and artists around the world -- suddenly had to confront the pandemic a year later, which effectively shut down the performing arts. He managed to find a virtual way to keep working on the show. "We shifted to do an online presentation that showed the basics of the story -- so we filmed each dancer one at a time in front of a green screen and projected them onto a screen with me to show the base of what the novel is," he said. And while the novel is partly a crime procedural featuring numerous scenes between Porfiry and Raskolnikov, it’s also a Russian crime procedural featuring an introspective young man who spends a lot of time alone. “I read the book 12, 15 years ago,” he said, “and I was like, how visceral some of the explanations are – the dream sequences — or the drunken- like wanderings in the streets (of St. Petersburg), the poetic nature of that – I was like, ‘I can dance that!’ “There’s no dialogue in these really visceral moments,” he said, “And I think dance is a wonderful way to communicate the internal.” Luigi Mangione As far as how to connect a 19th century Russian novel to a contemporary audience, Ikeda didn’t know it back in 2019, but in 2025, a very 21st century kind of Raskolnikov character is making headlines: Luigi Mangione, who allegedly murdered a health care executive in New York. “I was blown away,” Ikeda said, “at a young ideological beautiful young man who feels disenfranchised, has no power in the system and makes a bold move to try and shift things. “It’s also like Dostoevsky’s is trending right now,“ he added. ”White Nights (on BookTok) – it’s landing on Top 10 lists – because a lot of youth need to hear these messages again. “To hear that this has happened before,” he added, “to hear that they’re not alone in feeling so alone. “I think – I’m both glad and mortified that there’s this resurgence of these ideas now," he said, “and so I feel quite honoured to be able to explore them as deeply as we have been these last few years.” Crm & Pnshmnt opens Wednesday at the Victor Mitchell Theatre at the Pumphouse as part of the 2025 High Performance Rodeo. For more information about the show, go here.
