Assembly Hall: Crystal Pite’s newest dance-theatre collaboration - Vancouver Ballet Society
By Rachel Silver Maddock
On the heels of the widely acclaimed Revisor (2019) and Betroffenheit (2015), Kidd Pivot is back with a new dance-theatre hybrid co-created by Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young. Assembly Hall premieres at the Vancouver Playhouse October 26 — tickets are already sold out for the four night run — kickstarting their tour to Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec City.
Internationally sought-after choreographer Pite, who started her career dancing with Ballet BC, and Young, co-founder of Electric Theatre Company, have captivated audiences for almost a decade with their own genre of work that pulls from both disciplines. Assembly Hall promises many of the elements we have come to expect from this award-winning team: sharp, specific physicality; animated characters; the layering of narrative and surreal worlds; and the extreme contrast of wit and tragedy that points to the essence of the human condition.
Three weeks before the premiere, I sat down with cast members Renée Sigouin and Livona Ellis during a break in Kidd Pivot’s rehearsals at Scotiabank Dance Centre. As we chatted, the dancers spoke enthusiastically about the work, while being careful not to give away any spoilers.
“Jonathon and Crystal are continuing their research with how movement relates to our characters’ voiceover texts, and the various ways of embodying that,” says Sigouin. “With Revisor, we found this caricature way of moving that was really exaggerated, and with this work we’re playing more with varying tones of animation.”
Like other Pite-Young works, the script for Assembly Hall was recorded by voice actors in advance and brought into the studio, where it is being married to choreography with painstaking precision. Pite’s Kidd Pivot dancers are known for virtuosity, and there is something seductively specific about how they work with text. For Ellis, a new company member who went straight from her final tour with Ballet BC into rehearsals with Kidd Pivot (the day after getting off a plane, Sigouin pointed out), working with the text is a good challenge.
“Learning the script, learning the spaces, the breath, trying to embody the voice but also just catching the words is so challenging,” Ellis says. “Even just shaping your mouth — because how I would normally say something would not necessarily match the actor’s voice.”
Ellis performed in Pite’s The Statement and Solo Echo during her 11 years with Ballet BC, but Assembly Hall is her first creative process with Kidd Pivot. She says she is “in awe” of all the moving parts, the level of production and size of the team, and the way the crossover between dance and theatre is complete.
“All our movement is informed by a clear intention or impulse,” she says. “The narrative and the dancing, the physical and the theatrical, they inform each other, and create more clarity and more expression. Crystal and Jonathon share both sides of that coin … They switch hats all the time and it really works.”
Sigouin, who has performed with Kidd Pivot since she understudied in Betroffenheit in 2017, says, “I feel like I trust [the directors] so much that, you know, I can get handed a scene or script and just try something and I know they will steer it in the right direction. Things move quickly because they know what they like.”
Assembly Hall is built around an original script written by Young. The quirky premise brings together a group of medieval re-enactors in a community hall to discuss their organization’s fate — but this is just a launching pad.
“This idea of the medieval re-enactors is just a container or reason for why these people are gathering and what brings them together,” says Sigouin. “And then things happen that start to tear them apart. We’re exploring how and why we [as human beings] need each other.”
The gradual deconstruction of narrative into abstraction — revealing new dimensions of the characters and plot — is a familiar Pite-Young motif. In past works, opening up those cracks in reality (and in the audience’s imagination) has been the result of a powerful combination of lighting, sound design, and contemporary dance. With much of the same production team, these elements will be back in full force in Assembly Hall, but Ellis says the play between worlds is more blurred or interwoven this time around.
Although the dancers were cagey about specifics, they said the narrative will bring up themes of identity, purpose, belonging, and isolation — all of which feel apt in our ideologically charged, divided society.
“What are the things that drive people to the edge of their disagreements?” Ellis asks. “Within our structured group there is a power struggle and a moral struggle. [We are forced to ask] why do you believe what you believe is right and wrong, and will you fight for what you believe in?”
What else can we expect from Assembly Hall? A spectacle worthy of the hype, according to the dancers, and the armoured knight in the trailer has certainly whet my appetite. They rave about the stunning costumes, props, and set, the astonishing voice-over work, and — Ellis and Sigouin both laughed at this, not meaning to brag — amazing solos from the dancers.
