Dark Matters

The right choreographer at the right time will find herself torn between stages, cities and continents. Canada's Crystal Pite is one such in-demand figure on the international dance scene. Her company, Kidd Pivot, is based both in Vancouver and Frankfurt, while for three months of the year she is in the Hague, creating work for the Nederlands Dans Theater, with whom she is an associate artist.

A former dancer with William Forsythe's Ballett Frankfurt, Pite has a "rare gift for conveying emotion", says the UK Guardian, while the Vancouver Sun says "she keeps us on guard in uncompromising dance terms". Time Out's Nick Dent spoke to Pite about her full-length production Dark Matters, playing in the Sydney Festival this month.

We hear that you're coming to perform in Dark Matters in a company of six dancers.
Yes. I do perform in the piece, and I've never been to Australia before, so I'm a bit excited about that!

What kind of challenges does it pose when you have to choreograph and dance at the same time?
That's a huge challenge actually. I started my own company in 2001 and I wanted to keep dancing, and find a synthesis between myself the choreographer and myself as a performer. I really love being on stage, but the challenge of course is that it requires me to be objective and to be able to see the work from outside. I've developed different ways of tackling that problem. Sometimes I have people stand in for me. Sometimes I'm literally jumping back and forth between the stage and the audience when we're rehearsing.

So what does the title of this show mean?
The title refers to dark matter, which is everything in the observable universe that can't actually be seen but we know is there because of its effects on gravity and the evolution of galaxies. And I liked very much this idea of being affected and manipulated by something that's unknowable. And I guess it's a little bit like how I feel when I'm creating [a dance piece] and don't necessarily know where I'm going or how I'm going to get there.

OK, but how does this dance piece portray unknowability?
Working with a ‘shadow' character was a way to personify that idea. I was interested in the kuroko character in Japanese kabuki theatre. He's sort of an anonymous, black-clad, mysterious figure who manipulates the performer and the set elements in the theatre. And also the bunraku theatre, the puppet theatre of Japan, where there'll be three or four puppeteers on one puppet and again they're covered in black costumes and they do their performing through the puppet.
 
So there's a puppetry element to the piece?
Yes. Act one is a kind of fable, a narrative piece; it's actually a puppet show. There's a live performer and a puppet that is manipulated by four puppeteers who are also dancers. It's much more theatrical than act two, which is more of an abstract contemporary dance piece. What I intended was that the events of act one affect the way the viewer watches act two.

Your choreography is described as having classical elements - does it?
I'm not exactly sure what that means except that I trained in classical ballet and danced in ballet companies for 13 years. So I have that in my blood and that's in my choreography somehow. I'm not really interested in classical choreography, but I am interested in things classical ballet might afford us as movers: certain kinds of articulation or certain sense of line, or certain details and configurations; architectures in the body.

Tell me about the music in this production.
It's an original composition for the show by Owen Belton, whom I've been collaborating with for about 15 years. I'm really fortunate to have met Owen at an early stage in my choreographic career. I think his aesthetics in sound line up with my aesthetics in dance. In the first act of Dark Matters the protagonist, Peter, crafts a puppet out of cardboard, string, glue and wood so a lot of the sound comes from cutting, tearing paper and building. Owen samples sounds, but also creates melodies acoustically. He plays guitar and cello and piano and xylophone and they get manipulated electronically.

How did you get into dance?
I started dancing when I was four: pretending to be a seed and growing into a flower. And I had a couple of wonderful teachers who gave me a great classical base and opened my eyes to choreography. They encouraged me to choreograph from a very young age. The first thing I choreographed and presented to the public was a solo for myself; I was about 13. 

Why is your company called Kidd Pivot?
Finding a name is really hard because it's like titling a whole body of work and most of it you haven't made yet. It's like naming a child! ‘Pivot' appealed to me because I like the inherent skill; in order to execute a pivot you need a certain technique. It changes your point of view and your direction. In counterpoint to that I wanted something that was more reckless and irreverent, so I was attracted to the name ‘Kidd' because of Billy the Kid and Captain Kidd and Cuban boxers that are named Kid Chocolate or Kid Gazillion.