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KIDD PIVOT
THE TEMPEST REPLICA
TUE - THU | OCT 23 - 25, 2012
ON THE BOARDS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Credits......................................2
Curator’s Note..........................3
Choreographer’s Note..............4
Beginner’s guide.......................5
A quick intro to Kidd Pivot
The Tempest Synopsis.............6
Bios..........................................7
Interview..................................10
An interview with Peter Boal (PNB)
& choreographer Crystal Pite
photos by Jorg Baumann &
Chris Randle
CREDITS
Created by: Crystal Pite
Performers:
Bryan Arias
Eric Beauchesne
Sandra Marín Garcia
Yannick Matthon
Jirí Pokorný
Cindy Salgado
Jermaine Maurice Spivey
Composer: Owen Belton
Sound Designers: Alessandro Juliani, Meg Roe
Voice: Peter Chu, Meg Roe
Lighting Designer: Robert Sondergaard
Set Designer: Jay Gower Taylor
Projection Designer: Jamie Nesbitt
Costume Designer: Nancy Bryant
Costume Builder: Linda Chow
Prop Builders: Hagen Bonifer, Arnold Frühwald
Choreographer’s Production Assistant: Carl Staaf
Production Assistant: Sandra Li Maennel Saavedra
Management: Josef Chung, Bernard Sauvé, Sharon Simpson,
Jim Smith, Bonnie Sun
Technical Director: Jeremy Collie-Holmes
Assistant Technical Director: Wladimiro Woyno
Stage Manager: Caroline Kirkpatrick
Artistic Director’s Assistant: Eric Beauchesne
Company Manager: Brent Belsher
International 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 receipt for income tax purposes will be issued.
104 - 336 East 1st Avenue
Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 4R6 Canada
Phone: 1-604-683-6552
[email protected]
kiddpivot.org
Seasonal support for OtB is provided by
This production is sponsored by
CURATOR’S NOTE
Closing night, October 25, will mark the 7th time Kidd Pivot has
performed at On the Boards in the past two years.
From 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.
C-R-Y-S-T-A-L = 7 letters = T-E-M-P-E-S-T.
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)
Lane Czaplinski
Note from
Crystal Pite
The 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 deeply
invested in the performance: the choreography
becomes more than just a dance between two
people – 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 on
revenge, ultimately decides to choose virtue over
vengeance, relinquishing his power and ambition
in 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 instinct
and the intellect. The Island, like the mind, is a place
of mystery, spirit and ego.
BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO
KIDD PIVOT
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.
1. 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.
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:
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
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 Milan
Miranda, his daughter
Ariel, a spirit, indebted to Prospero
Caliban, resident monster of the Island, enslaved by Prospero
Alonso, the King of Naples
Sebastian, The King’s brother
Ferdinand,The King’s son
Antonio, 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 Miranda
to 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.
BIOS
Integrating 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 (20102012) 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 portfolio 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
INTERVIEW
with 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 performance, 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
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 doing 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.
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.