Crystal Pite kicks off new Digidance series, as DanceHouse joins national forces for online programming
Streaming of Body and Soul marks new direction in dance programming—possibly for the longterm
Crystal Pite’s Body and Soul at the Paris Opera Ballet. Photo by Julien Benhamou
CANADIANS WILL HAVE access to the film premiere of Vancouver choreographic star Crystal Pite’s Body and Soul at Paris’s glittering Palais Garnier as part of DanceHouse’s new streaming series called Digidance.
The large-scale show, filmed during its live Paris Opera Ballet premiere in 2019, will stream online February 17 to 23.
DanceHouse artistic and executive director Jim Smith says it’s a rare opportunity for Vancouverites. Having followed Pite’s career here with her Kidd Pivot company works like Betroffenheit and Revisor, they can now watch the homegrown icon stage a work with 36 honed dancers .
“It’s very much a chance to identify and declare her to be ours—to say ‘Look at this: here’s one of our own on a truly international stage, and look at how proud we can all be as we watch this work,’” Smith tells Stir. “Crystal’s piece is fantastic, it is true to form, and it has her signature all over it. The Paris Opera Ballet is a huge institution and I can’t imagine what it’s like for an individual, or individuals, to navigate it. It’s just at a scale that’s not the case with Kidd Pivot, and to see the integrity of those creators on a much bigger scale, and just be able to master those forces, is really something.”
Body and Soul marks Pite’s second full-length creation for the powerhouse French company, following 2016’s critically acclaimed The Seasons’ Canon.
“The Paris Opera Ballet doesn’t tour much—maybe two weeks out of every year—and the cost and logistics make it a very rarefied thing,” Smith adds.
DanceHouse joined forces with Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, and Montreal’s Danse Danse to launch Digidance—a streaming series in response to the closure of stages across the country due to COVID-19.
The companies have collectively decided to deliver full-length Canadian and international dance content online. Programming announcements will follow soon.
DanceHouse experimented with streamed content in the fall, with two livestreamed shows (including a performance by Nederlands Dans Theater 2) and a prefilmed one (Dancing at Dusk—A Moment With Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring, filmed on the beach of Senegal). “The filmed event seemed to have a larger success,” Smith reports.
The Paris Opera Ballet show, directed by Tommy Pascal, has high-production values, multiple cameras, and editing work.
Rather than take the place of live performance, Smith sees the role of such content as feeding the hunger to see shows in-person again—whenever that happens. “These experiences will either remind people what it is like, or introduce a curiosity in audiences who haven’t experienced it yet,” he surmises.
Jim Smith, artistic and executive director of DanceHouse.
Smith sees filmed programming as continuing long past pandemic lockdown. “I hope there will be a legacy that comes out of these digital offerings,” he says. “In the situation of DanceHouse, we’re now able to reach a whole province and they can engage in a way that they couldn’t when it was just on a stage in Vancouver.
“It’s important to view it as something complementing what is going on in a live space,” he adds.
A small revolution is happening in dance around the world as it starts to move more aggressively into the digital world, Smith observes. “Dance is such an ephemeral form and it disappears,” he observes. “Is this a moment when it’s going to be documented more than it has in the past?”
The film of Body and Soul is presented with English and French subtitles. Before the streamed performance, there will be a 15-minute pre-recorded interview with Pite and the Kidd Pivot creative team behind the Paris Opera Ballet production: composer Owen Belton, assistant to the choreographer Eric Beauchesne, costume designer Nancy Bryant, set designer Jay Gower Taylor, assistant to the choreographert Jermaine Spivey, and lighting designer Tom Visser. The interview was produced in Vancouver by Collide Entertainment and Kidd Pivot. Find info here.
Smith, a veteran dance producer, reflects that seeing Pite's work in France find a viewing here brings him full circle. "In many ways I see myself as a glue that tries to make the dance world stick and stay connected and allow things to happen," says Smith, who was present for the premiere in Paris. "Now being able to bring it back here with the audience is just an interesting moment, to see the elasticity of my career. I would have never thought when I was at the Paris Opera in 2019 that there would be this opportunity."
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