Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM: Dark Matters
Saturday, February 13 • 7:30 p.m., Eric Harvie Theatre • The Banff Centre
Adult $37 to $27 • Senior/Student $34 to $24
Day of performance: Adult $40 to $30 • Senior/Student $37 to $27
Banff Centre Box Office: 1-800-413-8368 or 403-762-6301
Presented as part of the 2010 Visiting Artists’ Series
As a choreographer, Crystal Pite is intimately connected to the space that exists on the fringes, and to movement that occurs outside what is readily visible. She’s interested in shadows and darkness, and the effect that those alternative spaces have on what’s lit, and easily seen. In February, Pite returns to The Banff Centre with her company, Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM, withDark Matters, a work that exists in the push and pull between the visible and the unseen, between creation and destruction.
“I find a pleasing parallel between what we don’t know about the universe, and what we don’t know about the mind,” Pite says. “Creation for me is about experiencing unknown territory, but it is also about trying to perceive my own mind. Something unknowable, destabilizing, and strangely beautiful compels me to create.”
Set in two pieces for six dancers, both with original music by composer Owen Belton, Dark Matters begins with a theatrical fable, with the dancers manipulated by anonymous puppeteers. The puppeteers become the invisible force, with the dancers’ bodies covered completely for an abstract effect. The second act portrays a struggle between manipulation and freedom, in an act of pure dance. Pite’s inspiration is the mysterious and unknowable dark matter, what she calls the “terra incognita of our day.” It makes up 96 per cent of the known universe, affecting the structure and evolution of everything, while remaining unseen.
A former company member with Ballet British Columbia and Ballett Frankfurt, Crystal Pite formed her own company, Kidd Pivot, in 2001. As a choreographer, she has created works for companies including Netherlands Dance Theatre 1, Ballett Frankfurt, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Ballet British Columbia, the National Ballet of Canada, and Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, where she was resident choreographer from 2001 to 2004. She won the Clifford E. Lee Award for choreography from The Banff Centre in 1995, and a 2008 Governor General’s Mentorship Award. Pite is currently an associate dance artist for the National Arts Centre, and is associate choreographer for Netherlands Dance Theatre.
Dark Matters premiered at the National Arts Centre last April, and after this performance in Banff, Pite and the company will return home to Vancouver for a performance at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad.
Upcoming performances in The Banff Centre’s Visiting Artists’ Series: Kidd Pivot (February 13), Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and Edgar Meyer (February 14), Corb Lund (February 23) Manitoba Theatre for Young People’s Beneath the Banyan Tree (February 27 – 28), Suzanne Vega (March 5), Anton Kuerti (March 6), Yasuko Yukoshi with Masumi Seyama VI (March 7), Hawksley Workman (March 12), The Cottars (March 13), and more.
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- More information on The Banff Centre’s 2010 Visiting Artists’ Series
