KIDD PIVOTTHE TEMPEST REPLICATUE - THU | OCT 23 - 25, 2012

ON THE BOARDS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Credits......................................2

Curator’s Note..........................3

Choreographer’s Note..............4

Beginner’s guide.......................5A quick intro to Kidd Pivot

The Tempest Synopsis.............6

Bios..........................................7

Interview..................................10An interview with Peter Boal (PNB) & choreographer Crystal Pite

photos by Jorg Baumann & Chris Randle

CREDITSCreated by: Crystal Pite

Performers: Bryan AriasEric BeauchesneSandra Marín GarciaYannick MatthonJirí PokornýCindy Salgado Jermaine Maurice Spivey

Composer: Owen BeltonSound Designers: Alessandro Juliani, Meg RoeVoice: Peter Chu, Meg RoeLighting Designer: Robert SondergaardSet Designer: Jay Gower TaylorProjection Designer: Jamie NesbittCostume Designer: Nancy BryantCostume Builder: Linda ChowProp Builders: Hagen Bonifer, Arnold FrühwaldChoreographer’s Production Assistant: Carl StaafProduction Assistant: Sandra Li Maennel Saavedra

Management: Josef Chung, Bernard Sauvé, Sharon Simpson,Jim Smith, Bonnie SunTechnical Director: Jeremy Collie-HolmesAssistant Technical Director: Wladimiro WoynoStage Manager: Caroline KirkpatrickArtistic Director’s Assistant: Eric BeauchesneCompany Manager: Brent BelsherInternational Agent: Menno Plukker Theatre Agent Inc.

Acknowledgements

The Tempest Replica is a co-production of Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Gemeinnütziger Kulturfonds Frankfurt Rhein Main, Monaco Dance Forum (Monaco), Sadler’s Wells (London), National Arts Centre (Ottawa), DanceHouse (Vancouver), L’Agora de la danse (Montreal), and SFU Woodward’s (Vancouver).

Kidd Pivot gratefully acknowledges Kemptener Tanzherbst (Kempten) and SFU Woodward’s (Vancouver) for the residencies provided towards the creation of this work.

Kidd Pivot gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council, the City of Vancouver. Eponymous gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Thank you to Jim Vincent and Joke Visser at Nederlands Dans Theater, Dorothee Merg, David Raymond and Tiffany Tregarthen, Kaja Maennel and Leela, Daniel, Katharina and Lea Wiedenhofer, Mauricio Salgado, Peter Chu, Julie-anne Saroyan, Jason Dubois, and Artemis Gordon at Arts Umbrella.

Kidd Pivot Performing Arts Society is a non-profit, charitable organization registered in British Columbia, Canada. To make a donation to support the work of Kidd Pivot, please donate online via our website, or make cheque payable to Kidd Pivot Performing Arts Society and send to the address below. An official tax re-ceipt for income tax purposes will be issued.

104 - 336 East 1st AvenueVancouver, British Columbia V5T 4R6 Canada Phone: 1-604-683-6552info@kiddpivot.orgkiddpivot.org

Seasonal support for OtB is provided by

This production is sponsored by

CURATOR’S NOTEFrom Peter Boal’s interview with Crystal Pite on our website, it appears she was inspired to work with Shakespeare’s The Tempest partly from a desire to work with an existing narrative; partly from reading Peter Brook’s thoughts on the play; and partly from the challenge of trying to choreograph a shipwreck through a human body.

Shakespeare apparently drew some inspiration for the play from the wreck of The Sea Venture, one of a 7 ship fleet of the Virginia Company of London that began sinking in a storm and saved all of its passengers by deliberately driving itself onto the reefs of Bermuda, July 25, 1609 (during the 7th month of that year).

Shakespeare first used “tempest-tossed” in his plays Romeo and Juliet and MacBeth. The Tempest is believed to be the final play Shakespeare wrote by himself between 1610 and 1611.

In the 19th century, “tempest-tossed” was used by American poet Emma Lazarus in the lines inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. The crown of the statue contains 7 spikes thought to represent the seven seas and the seven continents.

Crystal has an exercise she uses to warm-up and organize improvisations that refers to 7 points of the body: left hand, left elbow, left shoulder, head, right shoulder, right elbow and right hand.

Famed experimental theater director and fellow Canadian Robert Lepage is also taking inspiration from The Tempest, opening an operatic depiction of the play at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on the same date Crystal’s Tempest Replica opens in Seattle – 11/23. (1+1+2+3=7)

Closing night, October 25, will mark the 7th time Kidd Pivot has performed at On the Boards in the past two years.

C-R-Y-S-T-A-L = 7 letters = T-E-M-P-E-S-T.

Lane Czaplinski

NOTE FROM CRySTAL PITEThe Tempest Replica presents Shakespeare’s play in two parallel worlds. Firstly, the play is represented as an on-stage storyboard, with the plot points of the narrative delivered minimally, through the gestures, postures, and configurations of the faceless body inside a maquette-like space. Secondly, the play is explored through a series of portraits – the characters and relationships from The Tempest are manifested through fierce physical language and emotion.

My hope for the viewer is that, armed with the plot points of a narrative, he or she is more deeplyinvested in the performance: the choreography becomes more than just a dance between twopeople – rather, it is imbued with a story we have all shared.

The themes of Shakespeare’s The Tempest are resonant and beautiful. A magician bent onrevenge, ultimately decides to choose virtue over vengeance, relinquishing his power and ambitionin order to find his humanity. Prospero’s relationship to his muse, Ariel, and his monster, Caliban,is the relationship of any creator to his work, passion, obsession. The relationships between

the civilized and the wild echo the tension between the conscious and the unconscious, the instinctand the intellect. The Island, like the mind, is a place of mystery, spirit and ego.

BEGINNER’S GUIDE TOKIDD PIVOT1. Kidd Pivot, a Vancouver, B.C. based dance company founded by Crystal Pite, is a Pacific North West heavyweight touting international recognition. Between Pite’s choreographic brilliance and a cast of stunningly talented dancers hand selected from around the world, Kidd Pivot’s performances consistently leave audience’s jaws hanging ajar. Most recently in a long list of awards and residencies, Crystal Pite received the 2012 Canada Council for the Arts’ Jacqueline Lemieux Prize, an award given annually to an established dance artist who has made significant contributions to Canadian dance.

2. Crystal Pite was raised in the ballet tradition. She danced in a Ballet British Columbia before becoming a member of William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt from 1996 until 2001. In 2002, she started Kidd Pivot. It seems appropriate that, after leaving Forsythe’s ballet-deconstructionist tutelage, Pite’s choreography has moved several steps beyond its balletic roots. It is technically exacting, comical, and inventive. Check out this beautiful video of her dancing, it gives a sense of how thoroughly steeped in the exploration of her craft she is.

3. Kidd Pivot is a carefully chosen name. ‘Pivot’ is a physical word that implies a skillful, rigorous movement which is repeatable and practicable; it also suggests the changing of one’s direction or point of view. ‘Kidd’ is for the outlaw, the pirate, the fighter. The name reflects her desire to build a choreography that is at once precise and unpredictable.

4. Pite is drawn to storytelling and is known for infusing her choreography with theater; she sees narrative as a way to invite the audience to inhabit her dances. She often uses theatrical elements and conventions, such as set design and texts, in her pieces. For example, in Farther Out (performed at On the Boards

in 2007), Crystal made a duet between an astronaut and an alien into a reflection on a selection of orated texts, authored by Annie Dillard, about artists’ relationships to their creations.

In a more recent piece, Dark Matters, (performed at On the Boards in 2011) she used a fully developed set and puppets to tell a Frankenstein-esque story of a creator losing control of his creation. Check out the trailer for Dark Matters here:

5. There is a connection between Crystal Pite’s engagement with The Tempest and becoming a mother. In The Tempest, Prospero, who is a magician, a creator—essentially an artist—decides to give up on revenge, ambition, and his power in order to find his humanity and do what is best for his daughter. Pite, a new mom, resonated with the text; she is constantly balancing the demands of being an internationally regarded artist with the demands of motherhood.

6. This is Kidd Pivot’s fourth time at On the Boards and we are excited to welcome them back!

THE TEMPEST Cast of Characters

Prospero, a magician and the usurped Duke of MilanMiranda, his daughterAriel, a spirit, indebted to ProsperoCaliban, resident monster of the Island, enslaved by ProsperoAlonso, the King of NaplesSebastian, The King’s brotherFerdinand,The King’s sonAntonio, Prospero’s usurping brother

Synopsis

Prospero, a magician and the usurped Duke of Milan, intends to have revenge upon his enemies by having them delivered, by shipwreck, to the island where he and his daughter Miranda have been exiled for twelve years. Prospero, instructs the spirit Ariel to manifest a tempest, and the ship is wrecked upon the shores.

Upon seeing the shipwreck, Miranda is panicked, fearing for the lives of the passengers. Prospero calms her, and explains that twelve years ago his brother, Antonio, jealous and frustrated with Prospero’s studies of magic arts, conspired with King Alonso and the King’s brother, Sebastian, to usurp Prospero from his Dukedom. The three nobles captured Prospero and his two-year-old Miranda, forced them into a small boat, and cast them out to sea with no oars or sail. Eventually they arrived at the Island, where they met the resident monster, Caliban, and Ariel, a spirit trapped on the Island by a witch’s spell. Prospero tried to tame and educate Caliban along with Miranda, teaching him language and the ways of civilization, but when Caliban tried to rape Miranda, Prospero enslaved him.

Now the three nobles have been delivered safely to the Island, along with the King’s son, Ferdinand. Prospero’s intention is to have revenge upon his enemies, and to arrange a proper marriage for Mirandato Ferdinand.

Following his explanation, Prospero casts a spell on Miranda so she sleeps, and summons the spirit Ariel. Ariel, indebted to Prospero since he released her from bondage, yearns for the freedom he has promised

her once her tasks are complete. After describing the shipwreck, Ariel reminds Prospero that he promised to free her. Prospero sternly tells her there is still much work to do.

He asks Ariel to bring Ferdinand to Miranda so they can meet. When they behold each other, thesy fall instantly, desperately in love. In order to slow things down, Prospero pretends to mistrust Ferdinand, and forces him to perform hard physical labour as punishment.

On the other side of the Island, Ariel watches as King Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio wash up on the beach. The men believe that Ferdinand may have drowned. The King is devastated. Ariel casts a spell to make him sleep, and watches as the other two men conspire to kill him. Just as Sebastian raises his sword to murder his brother, Ariel awakens him. The men make excuses, and the three nobles exit in search of Ferdinand.

Meanwhile, Caliban, the enslaved monster, imagines killing Prospero and having the Island as his own.

Prospero is haunted by the guilt and shadow of Caliban, but he is focused on his revenge against the three nobles. He instructs Ariel to create a magic banquet. The nobles, tired and hungry, discover a table laid with food and wine, but as they touch it, the banquet turns rotten and terrifying. Ariel appears as a giant harpy and condemns the men to madness.

Following the banquet, Prospero releases Ferdinand from his heavy tasks and gives him Miranda’s hand in marriage. He instructs Ariel to conjure a magical wedding. Prospero’s joy at the wedding is interrupted by his thoughts of Caliban, and he leaves abruptly.

Ariel reminds Prospero that the nobles are still suffering in their madness. Prospero is moved by Ariel’s compassion and, choosing virtue over vengeance, decides to forgive the three men and to give up his magic forever. Upon releasing the men, he reveals to the King that Ferdinand is alive, introduces Miranda, and asks Ariel to magically repair the ship and send them all back to Milan where Prospero intends to enjoy the rest of his days as the Duke and a father.

Finally, Prospero frees Ariel.

Caliban is left behind.

BIOSIntegrating movement, original music, text, and rich visual design, Kidd Pivot’s performance work is assembled with recklessness and rigour, balancing sharp exactitude with irreverence and risk. Under the direction of internationally renowned Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, the company’s distinct choreographic language – a breadth of movement fusing classical elements and the complexity and freedom of structured improvisation – is marked by a strong theatrical sensibility and a keen sense of wit and invention.

Crystal Pite has collaborated with celebrated dance artists, theatre companies and filmmakers in Canada, Europe, and the United States. Since 2002, she has created and performed under the banner of her own company. Her work and her company have been recognized with numerous awards and commissions. Kidd Pivot tours extensively around the world with productions that include The Tempest Replica (2011), The You Show (2010), Dark Matters (2009), Lost Action (2006), and Double Story (2004), created with Richard Siegal. Kidd Pivot is the recipient of the 2006 Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, and was resident company at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, with the support of Kulturfonds Frankfurt Rhein Main, in Frankfurt, Germany from 2010 to 2012.

Born and raised on the Canadian West Coast, choreographer and performer Crystal Pite is a former company member of Ballet British Columbia and William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt.

Crystal’s choreographic debut was in 1990, at Ballet British Columbia. Since then, she has created works for Nederlands Dans Theater I, Cullberg Ballet, Ballett Frankfurt, The National Ballet of Canada, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal (Resident Choreographer, 2001-2004), Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Ballet British Columbia, Alberta Ballet, Ballet Jorgen, and several independent dance artists; most recently Louise Lecavalier. Crystal is Associate Choreographer of Nederlands Dans Theater and Associate Dance Artist of National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

In 2002 she formed Kidd Pivot and continues to create and perform in her own work. The company tours nationally and internationally, performing such highly demanded and critically acclaimed works as Dark Matters and Lost Action. Kidd Pivot’s residency at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt (2010-2012) provided her the opportunity to create and tour her most recent works, The You Show and The Tempest Replica, with her dancers and collaborators.

Crystal is the recipient of the Banff Centre’s Clifford E. Lee Award (1995), the Bonnie Bird North American Choreography Award (2004), and the Isadora Award (2005). Her work has received several Dora Mavor Moore Awards (2009, 2012), and a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award (2006). She is the recipient of the 2008 Governor General of Canada’s Performing Arts Award, Mentorship Program. Most recently, she was awarded the 2011 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award and the 2012 Canada Council’s Jacqueline Lemieux Prize.

A native of Puerto Rico, Bryan Arias moved to New York City with his family at the age of eight. While living in New York Bryan attended La Guardia High School for the Arts and Manhattan Youth Ballet School. After graduation, Bryan danced for two years with Complexions contemporary ballet under the direction of Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson. In 2008 he moved to the Netherlands for four years to dance with the Nederlans Dans Theater II and later NDT I. There he was part of original creations and performed works by Jiri Kylian, Ohad Naharin, Crystal Pite, and many more. This is Bryan’s first season with Kidd Pivot.

Born in Bécancour, Québec, Eric Beauchesne first encountered dance at age 16 when he made his performing arts début in a student musical. After graduating from L’Ecole supérieure de danse du Québec, he participated in many productions with Les Grands ballets canadiens, Le Jeune ballet du Québec and the Banff Festival Ballet. In 1994, he left for Europe where he became a member of the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe and later the Stadttheater Moenchengladbach in Germany. From 1997 to 2004, he danced with Les Ballets jazz de Montréal with whom he toured extensively the works of more than 15 choreographers including James Kudelka, Mia Michaels, Dominique Dumais, Patrick Delcroix and Crystal Pite. In 2004, he became an independent artist and has had, since then, the privilege of performing with La Fondation Jean-Pierre Perrault, Paul-André Fortier, Sylvain Emard Danse, Lina Cruz, ezdanza, Aszure Barton, ProArteDanza, Van Grimde/Corps Secrets and Louise Lecavalier. Eric has been part of Kidd Pivot’s projects since 2004 as a performer and has also recently collaborated as repetiteur and teacher for Kidd Pivot, Cullberg Ballet, Ballet British Columbia and Nederlands Dans Theater in the remount of Crystal’s past work.

Sandra Marín Garcia was born in Barcelona, where she studied dance at the Institute of Theatre, Dance and Choreography. After graduating in 1992, Sandra joined the company Concert Dansa Dark, under the direction of Guillermina Coll. Later she danced with Polish Dance Theatre, Vorpommern Theater Greifswald & Stralsund, Stadttheater Dortmund,

Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, Cullberg Ballet, and Nederlands Dans Theater I. Sandra has worked with such choreographers as Johan Inger, Paul Lightfoot, Sol León, Mats Ek, Jiri Kylián and Crystal Pite, among others. She has taught workshops at the Conservatorio Superior de Danza de Madrid María de Ávila, the Maximum Dans Course in Den Haag in 2010, and at the Netherlands Dans Theatre Summer Intensive in 2011 and 2012. She joined Kidd Pivot in August 2010.

A Montreal native, yannick Matthon studied at L’école supérieur de danse du Québec under the mentorship of renowned teacher Daniel Sellier and Max Ratevosian, himself a pupil of Pushkin. Upon graduation in 1996 he joined Alberta Ballet where he was entrusted with lead roles his first year with the company. Some of his roles there included Romeo in Ali Pourfarock’s Romeo and Juliet, the Son in Balanchine’s Prodigal Son, and Othello in Val Caniparoli adaptation of Shakespeare’s masterwork. After four years with the company Yannick joined Les ballets jazz de Montréal where he further explored contemporary dance. It is there in 2000 that Yannick first met Crystal Pite. In a bid to have more control over the shaping of his career, he left BJM in 2002 to become freelance artist, and as such his career grew the more eclectic. Since, he has had the opportunity to work with some of our greatest contemporaries such as Aszure Barton, Benoît Lachambre, Dominique Porte, Lee Su-Feh, Myriam Naisy, Robert Battle, Serge Denoncourt, Shawn Hounsell, The Holy Body Tattoo, Victor Quijada and Wen Wei Wang, to name a few. Yannick recently passed the 1000th representation milestone and is honoured to have done so while with Kidd Pivot.

Born in Prague, Czech Republic, Jirí Pokorný currently lives in The Hague, Netherlands. After his studies at the National Conservatory in Prague he joined Laterna Magika Praha where he danced for three years. He joined Nederlands Dans Theater II for three seasons and then the main company, NDT I, for four years. He has worked with such choreographers as Jiri Kylian, Sol Leon, Paul Lightfoot, Mats Ek, Stefan Toss, Crystal Pite, and many others. As a choreographer he has created three small works for Switch, a program at NDT and in August 2010 he created his first larger piece for the students of Maximum Dance Course in The Hague. He has also been collaborating with Spitfire Company (physical theatre) in Prague. Jirí joined Kidd Pivot in August 2010.

Born in Sunnyvale, California, Cindy Salgado trained in multiple styles of dance and continues to explore a range of inspirations. After graduating from the Juilliard School in 2005, with the Princess Grace Award, she began

freelancing in New York. She danced for Aszure Barton & Artists on many diverse projects such as Busk and Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dance Tour. She has been an assistant for Andy Blankenbuehler in preproduction for The Wiz, In The Heights, Bring It On, and recently did a workshop for Pan. Cindy has worked for Mia Michaels as both a performer and an assistant on projects like So You Think You Can Dance, Delirium (a Cirque du Soleil production), and Anna Vissi concerts in Greece. She performed in the first chuthis. full evening work in 2008. She has taught and choreographed for dance schools throughout the US, and has been a guest teacher at Santa Clara University. She is a cofounder and teacher for Artists Striving To End Poverty, an outreach organization that provides arts programming for underserved children in New York, Florida, South Africa, and India. Cindy is honoured to have joined Kidd Pivot in January 2009 for the creation of Dark Matters.

Jermaine Maurice Spivey was born in Baltimore, Maryland where he began his dance training and later attended performing arts high school at the Baltimore School for the Arts. After graduating with a BFA in dance from The Juilliard School in 2002, he moved to Lisbon, Portugal where he danced with Ballet Gulbenkian from 2002 to 2005. In 2005, Jermaine joined the Cullberg Ballet, where he met Crystal Pite, and performed with the company until Summer 2008. Jermaine has received several awards in dance including the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts 1st Level Scholarship and the Princess Grace Award. Jermaine has been performing with Kidd Pivot since August 2008.

Owen Belton graduated from Simon Fraser University in 1993 with a degree in Fine and Performing Arts, and studied music composition with Barry Truax and Owen Underhill. In his work, he blends acoustic and electronic instruments and found sounds, often in combination with computer processing techniques such as granular synthesis. Over the last ten years he has written music for many dance companies, including Kidd Pivot, the National Ballet of Canada, the Cullberg Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theatre, and the Royal Ballet of London. Owen has been collaborating with Crystal Pite since 1994 for Kidd Pivot and other national and international dance companies. Owen also creates scores and sound design for theatre and film and has worked with Touchstone Theatre, Headlines Theatre and Theatre Replacement.

Robert Sondergaard is a Vancouver-based designer with a diverse port-folio spanning over 15 years. He has collaborated with Crystal Pite since 2008 as well as designing for Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet BC, MovEnt, 605 Collective and Science Friction. In addition to dance, Robert has an extensive

television portfolio including the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Paralympic Winter Games, four Grey Cup halftime shows, the 2007 and 2011 Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Canada Winter Games, the Gemini Awards, and the Anne Murray: Friends & Legends special. Robert is a member of the Associated Designers of Canada.

Jay Gower Taylor started out as a professional dancer enjoying a 20-year international career. Parallel to his dance career, Jay developed skills as a designer. Some of his first designing opportunities were with Dancemakers, collaborating with Serge Bennathan on Absences, The Invisible Life of Joseph Finch, and the film Quand les grandmères s’envolent for CBC’s Opening Night. More recently, Jay designed Conversation, the play version of Finch, and Elles for Bennathan, and the Electric Company’s live-cinematic interpretation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit. For Crystal Pite, he designed Plot Point, Frontier and Solo Echo at Nederlands Dans Theater, Emergence at the National Ballet of Canada, and Dark Matters and The Tempest Replica for Kidd Pivot.

Nancy Bryant is based in Vancouver and designs costumes for dance, theatre, opera and film. She designed costumes for Crystal Pite’s Plot Point at Nederlands Dans Theater. Other design for dance include work for Dance Theatre of Harlem, Ballet de Monte Carlo, Stuttgart Ballet, National Ballet of Canada and Ballet British Columbia. Designs for opera include work for the Vancouver Opera: The Three Penny Opera, and for The Pacific Opera Victoria: The Rakes Progress, Rodelinda and The Flying Dutchman. She has received 12 Jessie Richardson awards for her design work in Vancouver theatre and a Leo award for the costume design in the film Earthsea.

Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe are theatre artists based in Vancouver. Their work has been seen and heard across Canada and around the world at: Canadian Stage, Factory Theatre, Centaur Theatre, Bard on the Beach, Ruby Slippers Theatre, Electric Company Theatre, Blackbird Theatre, Arts Club, The Vancouver Playhouse, Pi Theatre, Rumble Theatre, The National Arts Centre, Theatre Calgary, Alberta Theatre Projects, Theatre Junction, Citadel Theatre, Belfry, Intrepid Theatre, Theatre SKAM, Theatre Aquarius, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Western Canada Theatre, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, American Conservatory Theatre, Center Theater Group (Los Angeles), and the Britten/Pears Festival (Aldeburgh, UK). They are thrilled to be working with Kidd Pivot.

Jamie Nesbitt designs across North America. His resume includes: The Canadian Stage Theatre company, the National Arts Centre, The Vancouver

Playhouse, Theatre Calgary, Bard on the Beach, The Arts Club, The Electric Company, Pi Theatre, The Belfry, The Actors Repertory Company, Cahoots, The Citadel, Greenthumb, Why Not Theatre, Theatre Network, Touchstone Theatre, November Theatre, Company 14, The Yukon Arts Centre, and many more. A graduate of Studio 58, he is the recipient of seven Jessie Richardson Award nominations, one Jessie Richardson Award, the 2008 Mayor Arts award, the 2007 Sam Payne award, and the 2006 Earl Klien Memorial Scholarship. jamienesbitt.ca

INTERVIEWwith Crystal Pite & Peter Boal

Peter Boal: Ok, so, first of all, how are you?

Crystal Pite: I’m doing great, thanks! We just started our fall tour, we are in our third city already, Ottawa.

PB: Seattle feels so lucky that you come here regularly, it’s a treat for me and, I know, everybody here. Keep doing it!

CP: I’m looking forward to it.

PB: So Crystal, this is the first time that you have dealt with Shakespeare. Is that true?

CP: It is true!

PB: Yeah, and actually, there’s not a rich history of dance and Shakespeare—Romeo and Juliet of course, some Othello—but what made you choose The Tempest?

CP: Well it’s kind of a funny story actually, I was searching for inspiration and I knew that I wanted to work with a narrative for this production—I didn’t know what narrative—but I knew that I really wanted to try to work with an existing script, which is something I’d never done before. Originally, I was drawn to more of a film noir idea, some kind of crime story to follow but I. . .

PB: Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me somehow.

CP: Yeah, well it was interesting because I liked some of the tropes involved with that, but when I make a show with Kidd Pivot, it’s a show that I have to live with for a number of years and none of the higher themes of those stories were really resonating with me. I need it to be something I can really wrap my heart and soul around.

PB: Did you spend a lot of time with the text and dealing with the characters?

CP: I did, but initially, I wasn’t convinced about The Tempest. I had come across it because I was reading a book by Peter Brook about directing and looking for inspiration there, and I came across a chapter that he wrote describing some things about creative process and he uses The Tempest as a way to illustrate—his production, I think it was a late 60’s production of The Tempest—to illustrate some things about how he and his company work and how they create things. And, he was talking about the shipwreck—the first part of The Tempest is a shipwreck, and then the rest of the play happens on

an island—and he said, anybody who directs The Tempest has to deal with that shipwreck and decide how much of your time and how much of your budget you want to spend on it, just that first scene, when the rest of your play is going to take place on this island. But, I got about as far as the word ‘shipwreck’ and I got hooked on the idea, just because I love the idea of trying to translate into dance, a shipwreck. Like, what would a shipwreck look like translated into a single body. Or, how would I deal with staging a shipwreck on stage. Those sorts of things became really intriguing to me.

But, then I looked at The Tempest, the actual play, and I read it, and I decided there was no way I could do it as a dance, it’s just way too difficult and convoluted. So, I abandoned the idea of The Tempest, but I was still intrigued by the idea of shipwreck, so I was looking for other materials that had shipwrecks in them. And while this is happening we’re getting closer and closer to our first day of rehearsal and getting into production and I’m starting to run out of time and it just so happens that one of the people I had brought in to do sound design for me on this project—and I specifically wanted to work with sound design because I wanted to work with sound effects—she, Meg Row, a wonderfully talented actor and director in Vancouver—had just directed The Tempest the year before, in Vancouver, and she knew the play backwards and forwards. She made a really compelling case for why I should work with it and she ended up serving as a kind of dramaturge for the project. In the end, the higher themes of The Tempest really resonated with me. I did feel like it was something I could wrap my heart and soul around. And that I really identified with, as any director does, the character of Prospero, his conflict between trying to reconcile his ambition and his magic and his art with his family and his humanity. And, certainly, having had a child in the last couple of years, I’ve been dealing with those same thoughts.

PB: Will we have identifiable characters as in Prospero and Miranda, or is it more in the abstract?

CP: No, we have identifiable characters!

PB: I can’t wait to see how you deal with this.

CP: We’ve got Prospero and Miranda, and Ferdinand, Antonio, Sebastian, King Alonso, Caliban, and Ariel, of course. So they’re really, really interesting characters, and that’s another reason I was drawn to the play was the relationship of Prospero to the monster, Caliban, and to the muse, Ariel, which is of course, as creators, something we are dealing with all the time is the muse and the monster and, throw the daughter in there and I had a perfect mix for something that intrigued me.

PB: Will it be autobiographical to some extent?CP: Well, I think with everything I do, or, everything we do as creators, it is,

isn’t it? You always try to find a way to make it personal, make it connect with where you are in your life to be able to work with the material.

PB: Your movement and a shipwreck I think are a perfect match because there is such natural wave and motion and interruption in your movement, I just can’t wait to see this in fruition.

CP: Well, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I made the piece about a year ago and we’ve toured with it off and on for a year, but I’ve made a renovation in the last couple of weeks; it’s really nice to be able to return to a production and rework it again.

PB: Oh, I didn’t realize it has had two lives; it had a first life and then a reconfiguring.

CP: Yeah the second life is far more interesting, so far.

PB: Now, here’s a good question that somebody’s brought to me, and tell me if it is a theme, but, your work has often included hooded or masked figures. What draws you to those figures?

CP: I think there’s something about an anonymous body that excites me, just because I think when you are a viewer, you are always drawn to watch the face of a performer—which is really beautiful and compelling and interesting, and I love watching faces just as much as the next person—but, if you take the face away, you’re able to really watch the body. You’re able to see how much story, how much emotion there is in the body even without the face, and because I work with bodies this is really interesting for me. It may be just as simple as that—there’s probably more to it—but, it might be just that at its core.

PB: I think that’s a perfect answer. You know, Balanchine said that so often. He would tell dancers not to convey choreography with their face, not to act, not to emote, but that their body would be the means of expression and that they would not necessarily have to find that expression through the face. That’s sort of what you’re saying; I think Balanchine would take the step that you take so often, you just thought of it first.

CP: Well you know, in this work, we spend the first half of the performance masked—most of the characters do—Prospero is unmasked for the whole per-formance, as he is meant to look like the creator and the mastermind behind the performance, naturally, unmasked and manipulating the masked figures in the show. But, In part two, everyone is unmasked and fleshed out as a real character, and then somehow the emotion of the performers feels like it’s even two-fold, it’s so intense to see the person suddenly revealed, and as their face is revealed their movement is also more expanded and fluid and evocative of emotion and relationships. So, when we’re masked, the dancers are going

really very minimal with their movements and it’s much more mechanical and puppet like. Then in part two, when they are unmasked, they become really, human.

PB: I guess when they’re masked, you are asking a lot of our imaginations and they run to their fullest, and then suddenly they are either confirmed or change course when the masks are removed. So, it’s a whole other level of audience participation in a way, or imagination.

CP: I hope so. I mean I was also trying to—with the whole masked parts—I’m trying to deliver the plot points of the narrative of The Tempest quite quickly. My idea was that if the audience had—because most people don’t know The Tempest backwards and forwards the way they might know Romeo and Juliet—and so I thought I wanted people who were watching this performance to have this story in their back pocket while they watch it, and so I tried to deliver that to them in kind of a storyboard way, almost like a series of tableau, just getting the plot points across so that when we get to part two and everyone is unmasked and the characters are really revealed in their more human form that I don’t have to spend a lot of time there in exposition, I can just get right to the emotion of the scene can get into some major physicality there. Without having to say, ok, somehow. . .like, without getting a lot of mime, getting the point across.

PB: Do you find you are . . . is there a trend in your work to move more towards story and away from abstract or do you still touch on both regularly?

CP: Well I’ve always worked with either a story or some kind of subject or idea every time I make a piece. I don’t seem to be able to make a dance work without some kind of subject or some sort of idea informing me. I think probably most people are like that. But I would say that yes, I’m in a phase. I don’t know if it will last my entire career or not, but I’m definitely in a phase where I’m interested in story and, I guess, working with an existing script like The Tempest is really the culmination of a lot of experiments I’ve been doing lately with story telling.

PB: You know, when you were doing some master classes, some of the dancers involved talked about seven points and spine and feet method. Can you talk a little bit about both of those and how they connect with your work?

CP: First of all, I would say I definitely don’t have a methodology. I have a few exercises that I’ve developed as a way to warm up and as a way to have structure when we improvise. The seven points you’re talking about are just the right hand, right elbow, right shoulder, head, left shoulder, left elbow, and left hand. So, that’s just an example of locating a dance in different parts of the body and letting that dance jump from one of those locations to another or work with locations and combinations, that kind of thing. And then

CP: Just adorable, it’s inspired by the dancers that are around him, he loves to imitates them and dance for them, it’s just amazing to see.

PB: Has your work changed since he came along?

CP: Um, it’s hard to say, I don’t know, I think maybe not the work itself, although I’d like to think that it continues to evolve, get better, but, maybe the way that I work, I’m having to be a lot more efficient, I can’t second guess things I don’t have time to prepare. . . it’s definitely more difficult.

PB: Well, Crystal, I want to thank you for coming to Seattle so regularly, your work has just lifted us up so many times and I think it’s such a treat to have you back at On the Boards. We’ll all be there, I’m looking forward to it, it’s just great.

CP: Thanks, I’m looking forward to seeing you too.

similarly, I might go back and forth between having spine as the location of the dance to having the feet as a location for the dance and jumping back and forth between that; it’s just an interesting way to jump movement around your body. But, you know that’s not a new idea, and certainly I’m a hybrid of all the different people that I’ve worked with and those ideas come from many different people. In terms of your question, I think I’m interested in being able to pull the viewers eye to a particular part of the body, and usually that means isolating the rest of the body or holding the rest of the body in some way so that that dance can be viewed in the knee or something.

PB: Of course, and there’s parts of the body it would be obvious to move—the hand, the foot—but the spine is a less obvious one to see moving as an individual entity.

CP: It’s interesting too because the rest of your body has to get involved in order to facilitate the dance that might be in your spine, so it’s not like you’re completely frozen, but yeah, just finding various degrees of isolation and facilitation in order to make the dance apparent wherever it is.

PB: Boy are you going to have fun with our classical ballet dancers one day! I can’t wait. What’s coming up for you and for your company?

CP: Well, we are on tour until the beginning of December, mostly in North America. We have one trip over to Germany; we go to Munich and then just outside of Frankfurt. Our year finishes at the beginning of December at The Joyce in New York, and then I’m taking a year off. Before I do that though, I’m going to Holland to make a full length evening for Netherlands Dance Theater that premieres in early February. I’m going to try to take some of my company members with me when we do that because some of the work we’ve been do-ing over the past few years, I’d like to have them help me translate that over to NDT, so they’re going to come with me, which will be nice. Then, yeah, about mid-February I’m going to take a year off.

PB: I know that’s hard to do, but you will be so grateful. Is this for the need of the artist or the need of the mother?

CP: Both! Absolutely both. I started planning it a long time ago, I planned it long before Nico came along but as it turns out, it will be really nice, just as you said, to have for both needs.

PB: Is he a mover?

CP: Yes, he loves to dance. It’s so adorable!

PB: Yeah, how could he not.