Preview
UNCOLLECTED WORK
Kidd Pivot
Starring Crystal Pite and Cori Caulfield
Choreographed by Crystal Pite
Presented by Dancers’ Studio West
Runs December 18 to 20
Vertigo Studio Theatre
It’s back to the battlefield for Crystal Pite, the dance artist who had to postpone her November appearance in Calgary when she snapped her toe during a Montreal performance.
The patched-up Pite is ready for her rescheduled shows this week at the Vertigo Studio Theatre. This is the first Canadian tour for Pite’s fledgling company, Kidd Pivot, with a two-part production called Uncollected Work, performed by Pite and fellow Vancouverite Cori Caulfield.
The evening’s theme is the treacherous process of creation and, for Pite, creating dances is clearly not a stroll in the park. In the piece Field: Fiction, she depicts the choreographic act as a highly physical battle between herself and a troop of 50 prop soldiers. The two-foot warriors, which she designed, have rounded cement bases so they wobble but won’t fall down. It was while pushing and kicking these onstage adversaries that the 33-year-old Pite fractured her toe, becoming a literal casualty in a metaphorical war.
"It was really, really awful to have to cancel [performances]," she says by phone about the injury. "I was reminded of how little control we actually have over our lives."
Pite’s creative life has unfolded in surprising ways for a kid from Victoria who trained at a local dance school, not at one of Canada’s major ballet institutions. The pale, blond dancer was hired by Ballet British Columbia at the tender age of 17 and danced there for eight years, at one point described in Vancouver’s The Georgia Straight as "everyone’s idea of a delicate ballerina-princess." She emerged during this period as an intelligent, witty choreographer with a strong theatrical bent. Alberta Ballet was one of the first companies to recognize her talent and has two Pite ballets in its repertoire: the war-themed In a Time of Darkness (1994) and the whimsical Quest (1995), a spoof of chivalry.
In 1996, just as she was being advised to capitalize on her growing reputation as a choreographer, Pite chose to go to Germany to join one of the world’s top companies, Ballett Frankfurt, led by the enormously influential American choreographer William Forsythe. She stayed five years, and says one of the key lessons she learned from Forsythe was that artists must fearlessly edit and throw away ideas – even start over – as a work takes shape.
She encountered this wisdom again in the words of Annie Dillard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author. Dillard’s book The Writing Life was a revelation for Pite and informs both halves of the show coming to Calgary. In Field: Fiction, Caulfield reads passages from the book, dealing with such thorny problems as narrative structure. In the evening’s other piece, the science-fiction-flavoured Farther Out, excerpts from an interview with Dillard are integrated into Owen Belton’s score and a typewriter is used as a prop.
"(Dillard’s) presence is very large in both pieces," says Pite. "A lot of the issues that came up for her as a writer, in her creative process, were identical to the issues that come up for me as a choreographer and performer."
In Uncollected Work, Pite and Caulfield "relate as characters…. We also exist as author and subject, or inspiration, or muse…. And on a third level as two artists, Cori and Crystal, with me trying to direct the work, and showing the struggle to manipulate and control the material."
Although Pite could have stayed in Frankfurt, where the contemporary dance scene is certainly livelier than in Canada, she decided in 2001 that it was time to come home and develop her voice as a Canadian dancemaker-performer. She has been engaged as resident choreographer for Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, where she is creating three works in the period 2001 - 2004.
"I’m fascinated by the conundrum of art versus entertainment in the context of Les Ballets Jazz," she says. "I feel like I have two opposing forces to deal with. One is my desire as a dance artist to grow and develop and take risks…. On the other hand, I have a lot of respect for the following Les Ballets Jazz has, based on its mandate of accessibility and inclusion. I’m fascinated by the idea that it’s possible to meet the audience’s expectation, but still find an opportunity to take a risk."
With her own company, Kidd Pivot, "I’m completely free to take risks and explore whatever I want to explore."
Why the moniker Kidd Pivot? Kidd, she says, is reckless and irreverent, suggesting "the outlaw, the pirate, the fighter, the superhero." Pivot connotes "precision, skill, accomplishment. It’s a specific movement that changes your direction and your point of view." |
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