Vancouver’s Crystal Pite has all the right moves
Vancouver’s dance star is a talented woman on the move
Crystal Pite is always excited to reconnect with her projects.
Just back from the Netherlands, she’s catching up with Betroffenheit, a dance/theatre work that premièred in Toronto during the Pan Am Games and is coming to Ottawa for two nights this weekend.
The work began in late 2013, when she and the co-founder of The Electric Company Theatre, Jonathon Young, decided to work on a project that plumbs the depths of grief.
The show has evolved, as performance works often do, but Pite says, “the essential premise and spirit of the show has remained constant throughout. My own relationship to the material has gone through an evolution and I am very curious to see what it is like to remount the piece. We did our premiere last July in Toronto and I haven’t seen or dealt with it since.”
The show is to begin a tour with a start in Ottawa at the NAC, one of its co-producers.
At the time of this interview Pite, was just about to go into rehearsal with the dancers from her Kidd Pivot company.
“Looking at it with fresh eyes will be very immediate,” she says. “I love the show so much. It’s one of my favourite things I’ve ever worked on.” Why is that? “The emotion. I think it’s the content I’m working with and this incredible team we’ve been working with. Jonathon Young and his writing and his ability as a creator and performer. He is somebody I have always wanted to work with in this way.”
In 2009, Young’s daughter, along with two cousins, died in a fire. The torment of that tragedy is articulated in this project. But how does one express such emotion? Many times grief cannot be expressed in words. What one feels is deep inside. But combine words with dance and its ability to communicate through physical expression, on a more emotional level, and something profound can happen.
“It becomes something else,” Pite says. “It’s hard to define it and I don’t know it needs to be defined. There are many ways to combine dance and theatre and movement and text. I have always loved working with both, trying to have these two disciplines illuminate each other.”
Betroffenheit is German for speechlessness, shock, dismay. The performance on one level, Pite says, is “talking about a kind of speechlessness and the limits of language” but “this show, probably more than anything else I have done, has a voice.
“Going into the project all of us, myself, the dancers and collaborators, were terrified about getting wrong something we cared about so deeply. I’m sure we all approached it with trepidation about heaviness of content and how we were going to manage this story.”
It’s hard to define it and I don’t know it needs to be defined. There are many ways to combine dance and theatre and movement and text. I have always loved working with both.
— Crystal Pite
“What we ended up doing was taking our lead from Jonathon. We followed his example. It was astonishing and inspiring seeing him navigate the creation of the show.
“We always wanted to make this a universal story. The personal story is the engine, but, at same time, we wanted to make a universal discussion (about) the nature of suffering.”
That’s not to say there isn’t humour, of a sort, in this piece.
There is a clown with a harlequin kind of look. But don’t read much into that. “I haven’t done a lot of research on clowns. I went on instinct with that stuff.
“In the show, we are also talking about addiction, and the metaphor for that is called showtime. It is a kind of variety show. So when the protagonist gives into the lure of addiction as a coping strategy it manifests (on stage) as showtime. That’s where the clowns come in with some pink feathers and tap dancing. Working on that material was joyful, even though the reason it exists is quite dark.”
In all, Betroffenheit had three shows in Toronto and two previews in Banff.
After Ottawa, the show returns to Toronto for five more performances. And then it heads to Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, Dallas, Dublin, Birmingham and London, England. It will tour in 2017 as well.
Pite, who is the mother of a fiveyear-old, says she will tour with show as much as she can.
“I’d like to be there as it’s gaining momentum and capitalize on the growth that can happen when you build on something. I will make small changes and tighten up as we go along.
“I do love touring with my shows. It’s interesting being a choreographer or a director because my work doesn’t actually exist unless it is being performed. So there are these very rare and precious moments when I can connect with the thing that I/we have made.”
Pite always leans toward the per- sonal when she is creating.
“I always have to feel like I am somehow in it and that it contains some part of me. Otherwise I’m not invested in the way I need to be. It has to feel to me that the stakes are high. It needs to have great importance to find the energy to do this work. And I am grateful for any opportunity to share the work with people. That’s what it comes down to for me.”
As for her career, Pite is a recognized and respected international artist. She is the founder of Kidd Pivot company of Vancouver. And her resumé includes more than 40 works for companies such as Ballett Frankfurt, the National Ballet of Canada, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal and Louise Lecavalier/ Fou Glorieux. She is an associate dance artist with the NAC and in 2013, was named associate artist at Sadler’s Wells in London, England.
In Holland, her latest work for the Nederlands Dans Theatre, where she has been an associate choreographer since 2008, is called The Statement and it also features words by Young.
Next on the agenda is a work for the Paris Opera Ballet that will premiere in September and after that she’s preparing something for the Royal Ballet in London.
“I feel I have plenty of opportunity and can be pretty choosy about what I am taking on.
“I’m trying not to take on too much. I don’t want to burn out. I want to make sure the projects I do are things that I am excited about or inspired by.
“I only do one or two new creations a year, and for that reason I choose carefully.”