“But I’m not made for bliss; / my soul is strange to it; / in vain are your perfections: / I’m not worthy of them.” And thus, 18-year-old Eugene Onegin rejects the love of 17-year-old Tatiana, who has placed her fate in his hands. Aleksander Pushkin’s masterpiece, a novel in verse serialized from 1825 to 1832, tells a story natural to opera and ballet: the open heart that meets one strangely closed. Readers still debate Onegin’s choices, his reasons, the ways in which he thwarts … himself. At the ballet, John Cranko’s full-length Eugene Onegin has reigned since its premiere in 1965. So it’s high time for a new attempt at the ballet, and Yuri Possokhov, who trained and danced with the Bolshoi Ballet in Russia before joining the San Francisco Ballet, where he is the resident choreographer, has given us one. Premiered in Frisco last January, where it was called “triumphant,” the ballet now has its Chicago premiere with the Joffrey Ballet. —Laura Jacobs