Vancouver dance artist Crystal Pite releases video thank you for new Governor General's National Arts Centre Award
Back at work in the studio, the choreographer and director will see her Revisor return here next month
Crystal Pite. Photo by Rolex/Anoush Abrar
Revisor. Photo by Michael Slobodian
CELEBRATED VANCOUVER dance artist Crystal Pite likens her new Governor General’s Performing Arts Award to a “joyful shove” into the next phase of her creative career, in a video thank-you released this week.
The choreographer and director just received the special National Arts Centre Award, which recognizes work of an extraordinary nature by an individual artist or company in the past performance year. It carries a prize of $25,000, a commemorative medallion, and a specially commissioned work by a Canadian artist. She joined new laureates recognized for their lifetime achievement: Tomson Highway, David Foster, Rita Shelton Deverell, and Linda Rabin. This year’s Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts went to Michael Smith.
In its announcement, the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards Foundation praised the Kidd Pivot artistic director who’s worked at companies from the Paris Opera Ballet to Nederlands Dans Theater and Ballet BC for her “radical hybrids of dance and theatre that are assembled with a keen sense of wit and invention. Ms. Pite is known for works that courageously address such challenging and complex themes as trauma, addiction, conflict, consciousness and mortality; her bold and original vision has earned her international acclaim and inspired an entire generation of dance artists.”
In her video, Pite says the recognition makes her want to “strive harder and dig deeper to make things that are beautiful and meaningful, powerful, and that confront us and that connect us to each other in a transformative way”. Pite took a pre-planned hiatus during the pandemic, but her video finds her in a rehearsal studio where she says she’s now back at the creation process.
A former member of Ballet BC and William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt, Pite is associate choreographer of Nederlands Dans Theater I, associate dance artist of the National Arts Centre, and associate artist at Sadler’s Wells. With her own Kidd Pivot company, working with Electric Company Theatre’s Jonathon Young, she’s cocreated such international hits as Betroffenheit and Revisor, which DanceHouse brings back to the Vancouver Playhouse from March 30 to April 2. Meanwhile, her work The Statement, originally created for NDT, makes its premiere here at Ballet BC’s Reveal + Tell program March 3 to 5.
The 2022 laureates will be honoured at two events in Ottawa, culminating in the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards Gala at the National Arts Centre on May 28.
Related Articles
