ASSEMBLY HALL at Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★★★

“Assembly Hall is nothing short of spectacular”

Crystal Pite is a visionary theatre-maker. A once in a generation choreographer. Able to convey emotion through movement in a way unlike anyone else I have had the pleasure to see.

My first introduction to Pite was as part of a mixed bill for the Royal Ballet in 2017. Her short work, Flight Pattern, created in response to Europe’s refugee crisis, blew me away with its ambitious use of the whole company moving in synchronicity.

Her latest work in collaboration with Jonathon Young and her Vancouver based company, Kidd Pivot, takes an utterly bizarre concept that, on the surface, has nothing in common with that politically charged piece – an Annual General Meeting of amateur medieval re-enactors.

It is as perplexing as it seems. Pite and Young’s signature style, developed over the course of a number of productions together, has dancers moving and lip syncing to recorded speech. They animate conversations with exaggerated hand gestures and head tilts, with each dancer imbuing their movements with oodles of personality as we are introduced to the reasons the group has gathered. Slowly through the narrative, after comic arguments about where refreshments feature on the agenda, it is revealed that the group are facing dissolution, with their fate hinging on a final vote put off since last year.

From relatively inauspicious beginnings, over the course of 90 minutes this show turns into something totally unexpected and will leave you gripped throughout. Pite and Young use this group of amateur re-enactors to explore themes ever present in theatre such as: Why do we tell stories? And what do the stories that persist say about us today? Are we doomed to repeat the failings of our forebears or can we learn to save ourselves and set us free?

As the piece moves into a dream-like sequence where the dance takes over, the conversation gives way to a soundscape of experimental electronic sounds using the recorded speech (Owen Belton, Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe). The group moves like a living organism, not in stops and starts but in ripples and waves. How much are these individuals in control, executing free will vs. playing a role they are destined to play, over and over? This is explored right from the get go, with one of the dancers seemingly being pushed and pulled around by another, moving like a marionette. Movements flail and flutter as if under strobe lighting and repeat in mysterious ways. When later the same movements recur by a dancer in a full suit of armour they gain an audible element which inexplicably changes the feeling of the movement.

The set (Jay Gower Taylor) is exquisitely simple – a backdrop that is without doubt a run down community hall, with grubby walls and moody lighting (Tom Visser) that adds to the feeling this is a place in disrepair. The raised stage-upon-a-stage is a clever trick to instantaneously move the action from real to surreal.

The costume (Nancy Bryant) is again simple yet characterful. Dancers wear plain clothes whilst in their AGM but these get increasingly elaborate as the re-enactments play out.

Each element, movement, sound, costume, and lighting is top notch but together it is more than the sum of its parts. Pite uses dance to convey a message in concert with other elements and in many ways her approach to theatre-making is similar to her approach to the choreography – each element performing the role it’s best placed to play.

Out of many, we are left with one. A final image of a knight constructed from the torso of one dancer, the arm of another, with the whole figure moving as if being controlled by a master puppeteer.

I am not exaggerating when I say Assembly Hall is nothing short of spectacular. I came out feeling enthused at what a perfectly executed production it was – the best and most sought after sensation after leaving the theatre. Pite proves her talent once again, and to think something so ambitious can be achieved out of a group of medieval reenactors makes it all the more joyous. I can’t wait to see what pops out of Pite’s enviable creative mind next.

ASSEMBLY HALL at Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed on 20th March 2024

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Michael Slobodian

Previously reviewed at this venue:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY (v95 and v96) | ★★★ | March 2024

NELKEN | ★★★★★ | February 2024

LOVETRAIN2020 | ★★★★ | November 2023

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER AT 65 | ★★★★★ | September 2023

DANCE ME | ★★★★★ | February 2023

BREAKIN’ CONVENTION 2021 | ★★★★★ | July 2021

WILD CARD | ★★★★ | June 2021

OVERFLOW | ★★★★★ | May 2021

REUNION | ★★★★★ | May 2021

ASSEMBLY HALL

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★★★★★

“a hyperaware choreography of multiple realities, alive to the possibilities of reconfiguration and reorientation”

Canadian company Kidd Pivot present Gogol’s Government Inspector as their latest collaboration between dancers and the spoken word at Sadler’s Wells this week. Crystal Pite, as choreographer and director, and writer Jonathon Young, take this well loved classic of the Russian stage, and turn it into something utterly unanticipated. It is a piece true to its roots—Pite and Young give their work Gogol’s Russian title Revizor (literally, inspector)—but in changing one letter in the title, they form a pun in English. It allows them to take us on a journey as unexpected as that of Gogol’s protagonist Khlestakov, when he winds up in a small provincial town to discover that he is mistaken for an important “government inspector.” By changing the ‘z’ to ’s’, Kidd Pivot’s subsequent ‘re-vision’ is not only an opportunity to ‘re-imagine’ Revizor but to re-configure their creative process as the dance proceeds. The company quite literally puts the whole process on stage.

It’s hard to describe how Revisor unfolds in words, even though, ironically, words form so much of the “music” that moves the dancers. In any given moment, Revisor is weaving together words spoken by off stage actors, often with additional music and sound effects underneath, and with lighting and even furniture, all in seamless synchronicity. The piece begins conventionally enough, with Gogol’s characters assembling to share the news that a mysterious stranger has arrived in town. We watch the dancers’ bodies respond, staccato-like, to each syllable of a text spoken by unseen actors. The dancers’ costumes (designed by Nancy Bryant) work well in the series of tableaux which the dancers configure and reconfigure the satirical intent of Gogol’s story. Particularly brilliant are dancers Jermaine Spivey as Postmaster Wieland, and Cindy Salgado as Anna, wife of the Director. But added to all this is the Choreographer’s own voice, creating and recreating the instructions for the dance. And it is her voice that causes everything else (from furniture or doorways flying in, or lightning strikes on a backdrop) to move as she makes one choice, then erases it in favour of another. It is this rich, multi-layered texture of the dance; the voices of the characters; the music and sound design (Owen Belton, Alessandro Juliani, and Meg Roe); the scenic design and the lighting (Jay Gower Taylor and Tom Visser), that takes us out of Gogol’s nineteenth century world and into a world that is very twenty-first. It is a hyperaware choreography of multiple realities, alive to the possibilities of reconfiguration and reorientation. And in watching, we realise that this is what Gogol was aiming for all along—a play of fantastic meetings and hyperbolic movements that seem no more real than fever dreams, but fever dreams that poor bodies must respond to, whether in ecstatic hope or dashed ambition.

Revisor begins with Gogol’s play, but mid performance it transforms into the abstract movements that are Kidd Pivot’s signature. Pite and Young’s vision plays out as an endless loop in which the dancers’ bodies twist and turn in extraordinary patterns that are always attempting to come together, only to be forced apart. In the endless quest to find new configurations, these restless dancers find the creative energy that drives the dance on. Eventually, almost leisurely, they find a way back to Gogol’s Khlestakov—a man trapped in the middle of a vast emptiness populated only with frustrated desire. He catches the imaginations of those he meets, he is caught in their schemes. But at the last moment, he (and the dancers) break free so that the dance can begin again.

Kidd Pivot’s take on The Government Inspector is an exhilarating evening that will appeal to dance fans and theatre goers alike. Don’t miss the opportunity to see this extraordinary company.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

ASSEMBLY HALL at Sadler’s Wells Theatre

★★★★★

“Assembly Hall is nothing short of spectacular”

ASSEMBLY HALL at Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed on 20th March 2024

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Michael Slobodian

Previously reviewed at this venue:

ASSEMBLY HALL

ASSEMBLY HALL

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed – 3rd March 2020

★★★★★

“a hyperaware choreography of multiple realities, alive to the possibilities of reconfiguration and reorientation”

Kidd Pivot’s take on The Government Inspector is an exhilarating evening that will appeal to dance fans and theatre goers alike. Don’t miss the opportunity to see this extraordinary company.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Revisor

Sadler’s Wells Theatre until 5th March

Previously reviewed at this venue: