Crystal Pite (born December 15, 1970) is a Canadian choreographer and dancer. She began her professional dance career in 1988 at Ballet BC, and in 1996 she joined Ballett Frankfurt under the tutelage of William Forsythe. After leaving Ballett Frankfurt she became the resident choreographer of Montreal company Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal from 2001 to 2004. She then returned to Vancouver where she focused on choreographing while continuing to dance in her own pieces until 2010. In 2002 she formed her own company called Kidd Pivot, which produced her original works Uncollected Work (2003), Double Story (2004), Lost Action (2006), Dark Matters (2009), The You Show (2010), The Tempest Replica (2011), Betroffenheit (2015), and Revisor (2019) to date. Throughout her career she has been commissioned by many international dance companies to create new pieces, including The Second Person (2007) for Netherlands Dans Theater and Emergence (2009) for the National Ballet of Canada, the latter of which was awarded four Dora Mavor Moore Awards.
In 2010, Kidd Pivot became the resident dance company of the German theatre Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, and for the next three years Pite premiered her work in Frankfurt, Germany. While working in Frankfurt, Pite choreographed The You Show (2010), which explored different types of relationships in various duets and The Tempest Replica (2011) which was based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. When her arrangement with Künstlerhaus Mousonturm expired she became an Associate Artist with Sadler's Wells' in 2013 and created Polaris (2015) based on Thomas Adès's music, using both the dancers from Kidd Pivot and 60 students from New York University. Her work Betroffenheit (2015), a piece co-created with collaborator Jonathon Young, premiered at the 2015 Pan American Games. Her most recent work for Kidd Pivot Revisor (2019), was also created with Jonathon Young, premiering in Vancouver with DanceHouse at The Vancouver Playhouse.
Throughout her career as a choreographer, Pite has choreographed works for world renowned companies such as Nederlands Dans Theatre I, The Paris Opera Ballet, Ballet Jörgen, Ballet BC, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, Cullberg Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, The Royal Ballet, Ballett Frankfurt, and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. She has choreographed over 50 works, many of which have been nominated for and won several awards. Currently, while running Kidd Pivot, she is also an Associate Artist at Sadler's Wells in London, an Associate Choreographer with Nederlands Dans Theatre in The Netherlands, and an Associate Dance Artist of Canada's National Arts Centre.
Early life and career Crystal Pite was born in Terrace, British Columbia on December 15, 1970. She has two younger brothers. Pite stated that she began choreographing when she was a toddler, creating choreography to a song called "My Little Red Wagon" at age 3. She grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, and started studying tap at age 4, then ballet the following year. She then studied dance under Maureen Eastick and Wendy Green. During this time Pite choreographed on her classmates on Saturday afternoons, and choreographed the musical at her high school. She also studied at the Banff Centre in summer programs and The School of Toronto Dance Theatre.
She joined Ballet BC as a dancer in 1988 and performed with the company for eight years. In 1990 she created her first professional choreography with the company called Between the Bliss and Me. The success of this work allowed her to create additional pieces with Ballet BC, as well as choreography with Les Ballets Jazz De Montreal and Canada's Ballet Jörgen. In 1990, Pite danced in her first William Forsythe ballet, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated which was her initial introduction to performing his work.
Ballett Frankfurt and William Forsythe Pite was attracted to Forsythe's choreography and wild interpretation of ballet. In 1995, she auditioned for his dance company Ballett Frankfurt. She was hired as a dancer, and in 1996, Pite left Canada for Germany to officially join the company. Pite performed around the world with Ballett Frankfurt in EIDOS : TELOS, The Loss of Small Detail, and Endless House. Pite was also excited to develop choreography with Forsythe using his improvisational technologies and in 2000 created Excerpts from a Future Work. She was involved in the creation of Forsythe's educational film "William Forsythe: Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye" as one of the four featured dancers. She retired from dancing when she was 40 after the birth of her son.
Return to British Columbia and Kidd Pivot
Pite returned to British Columbia in 2001 and took up residence in Vancouver. Later that year, she created a duet called Tales - New and Abridged with Cori Caulfield. In 2001, she was appointed to a three-year residency with Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal to choreograph new works. Her first show with the company, Short Works: 22, premiered that same year. She expanded this piece to be featured in the first part of The Stolen Show, also performed by Les Ballet Jazz de Montréal. The second part featured choreography that was also called The Stolen Show and the third piece was called Xspectacle.
Pite formed Kidd Pivot in 2002 as an inter-disciplinary performing arts company based in Vancouver. Her first dance shows with the company showcased her shorter works and sometimes featured other choreographers. Among her first pieces was Double Story, which explored two perspectives of a romantic relationship. Pite and Richard Siegal each choreographed a perspective and danced each section as a duet. Pite's choreography was called Man Asunder and was created two years after Siegal's section. It contained a through line of childhood friends who were having various dreams. At some points in the dance the performers became adults that contemplated the mysteries of the universe. At other moments they stepped out of character into a deconstruction setting by rearranging the sets or drinking water on stage. The set on stage included two large mirrors and the choreography included puppetry and masks.
In Lost Action, another work created for Kidd Pivot, Pite explored the theme of the disappearance of dance. The piece showcased a violent scene that left a man dead and then replayed this several times, each with variations. Lost Action had a simplistic costume design and a few props in order to enhance the performance. Most of the piece's budget was used to bring the cast of four men and three women to Vancouver to create the choreography. The dancing consisted of "fractured movement...exaggerated to make a dance of broken rhythms and twisted limbs." The piece blended classical contemporary and hip hop movements with immense control from the dancers. In 2011, the National Film Board of Canada recorded a section of this piece and released it as Lost Action: Trace. Her next work for Kidd Pivot was called Uncollected Work (2003) which Pite herself labelled "seminal Kidd Pivot".
While creating for Kidd Pivot, Pite was also commissioned to choreograph pieces for other companies in Canada and around the world. In 2006 Pite returned to Ballet BC to create Arietta. The title of the piece shares the same name as the second movement in Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 32, which is also the music that the choreography is danced to. The dance departed from Pite's usual style of using props and text and focused abstract movement by the eight performers.
Pite choreographed a solo on Louise Lecavalier called Lone Epic in 2006. Lecavalier acted as a conductor of an orchestra while the stage was littered with music stands. As she danced she turned the music stands to reveal messages, including "What is she really thinking?" and "What do you really want, really, really, really?" Lecavalier then knocked over music stands with her dramatic movement. As the choreographer, Pite was commended for developing a dramatic story that depicts the physical breakdown of a conductor.
Larger-scale works and international commissions In 2007 Pite created The Second Person for Netherlands Dans Theater I. Pite was inspired by Irish, Scottish and English folk songs. Her longtime composer Owen Belton used her inspiration to create unique music that complemented the storm cloud covered stage. The piece included 25 dancers who represent youth and the loss of innocence that comes with growing up. The dancers operated stick puppets while another puppet spoke into a microphone and a large wooden marionette performed as a member of the dance ensemble. The piece utilized many of Pite's signature thematic elements like text and clear narrative The piece was included in NDT's 2009 tour of the United States. In 2008 Pite became an associate choreographer with NDT and has created nine works for the first company since her first, Pilot X, in 2005.
In 2009 Pite created her first two-hour long work with Kidd Pivot, Dark Matters. The piece explored the capabilities of unseen external forces on the body and mind. In the first act a man creates a marionette that is controlled by four dancers dressed as kurokos, traditional Japanese stagehands. The puppet eventually turns on its creator and destroys him with scissors. After intermission all the kurokos except one remove their black clothing and turn into humans, still moving like puppets. Towards the end of the piece, the last shadow reveals that she is also human but moves like a newly created puppet. The piece finishes with the creator from the first act cradling the last kuroko as the kuroko pretends to sew strings onto the creator's body. The choreography was based on ballet vocabulary but was not considered a classical ballet piece. Instead it showed de-centered alignment so that the dancers could create asymmetrical shapes.
Also in 2009 Pite created Emergence for the National Ballet of Canada as part of the program Innovation. This choreography won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards for best choreography, best performance, best score and best production. The piece was inspired by Steven Johnson's work Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. The dance mimicked the movement of insects, which was a metaphor for human behavior. Some of the themes in the piece included hive mentality, hierarchical mentalities and gender issues. The dancers often performed the same movements but at random intervals throughout the piece. There were also moments of solos and small group pieces that mimicked significant events such as a mating ritual or the coronation of a hive queen.
Return to Frankfurt
In 2010, Kidd Pivot signed a two-year deal (which was later extended to three years) to become the resident dance company of Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt. As part of the deal, the company changed their name to Kidd Pivot Frankfort RM and premiered new choreography by Pite at the theatre house. This resulted in Pite splitting her time between Frankfurt and her hometown of Vancouver. Kidd Pivot also increased their touring schedule during this time as the company was invited to perform in various countries. Also in 2010, Pite chose to stop performing in her own work. Pite worried that this decision might take the joy out of choreographing but later said; "I have more knowledge and understanding of certain things, but less ability in my body... So it's an interesting pull in two directions there. What I do have are incredible people around me. I have incredible dancers — I dance through them."