Questo sito non supporta completamente il tuo browser. Ti consigliamo di utilizzare Edge, Chrome, Safari o Firefox.

Making a Statement

What is the friction between words and movement? What does one give us that the other doesn’t? If there is an intelligence in movement and physicality that cannot be expressed through words, do we look down on that intelligence?

Performance

Nederlands Dans Theater 1: “The Statement” by Crystal Pite

Place

Filmed in 2018 in co-production with Mezzo and La Belle Télé, directed by Tommy Pascal

Words

Róisín O'Brien

NDT1 perform Crystal Pite's “The Statement.” Photograph by Rahi Rezvani

subscribe to the latest in dance


“Uncommonly intelligent, substantial coverage.”

Your weekly source for world-class dance reviews, interviews, articles, and more.

Already a paid subscriber? Login

While many choreographers might shy away from words, either out of a sense of loyalty to pure movement or an aversion to narrative, Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young happily collide the two worlds together. Pite has spoken of how language can open up new possibilities for her as a choreographer.

“The Statement” sees four officials in nondescript suits caught in the orbit of a monolithic central table, perhaps in a windowless room in the basement of some government or corporate building. Two of the characters are from a department where blame for a conflict, that is spiralling out of control, shall fall: the other two are there to get a crucial ‘statement.’

NDT perform “The Statement” by Crystal Pite. Rahi Rezvani

Guilt, accountability, and the (malevolent) opacity of bureaucratic structures are recurrent themes in Pite and Young’s collaborations. Halfway through the dance, as insinuation, provocation and on—and off—the record statements are bandied about through voiceovers, the stakes are upturned: one investigator is instead deemed the scapegoat.

In these fraught plays with Young, Pite works with everyday recognisable gestures: hands cradling bowed heads, arms pushing against protesting colleagues, backs arching in desperation. Pite breaks them down, isolates each beat; she repeats, backtracks, varies, and builds on each brick of movement. But the quality is also soft; feet sliding across the floor, limbs rippling into extensions. We see the bare bones of an expression, our very mechanics laid bare, but emotion is never lost. If anything, it is heightened, written in strained, emphatic strokes. The alternating and often surprising rhythm of the choreography is always breathtaking to watch.

NDT perform “The Statement” by Crystal Pite. Rahi Rezvani

There’s a risk that the themes of distortion and displacement in “The Statement” translates into an evasive script: a risk in showing a constant deferral of responsibility and an infinite web of unnamed deceit, which can lose sight of the particular reality that Pite and Young want to depict. Each dancer’s specific characterisation holds this at bay, particularly Aram Hasler’s guilt-ridden official. A brilliant sequence where all four lash and move with frenzied calculation at opposite sides of the table is chillingly officious, yet physically desperate.

I watched this performance online. We can all agree on the irreplaceable experience of a live performance but this piece, beautifully and conscientiously filmed by Tommy Pascal, does not suffer. If anything, seeing the increasingly pleading faces of the performers up close, their joints clicking into tortured configurations, only adds to the tension of this impressive work.

Róisín O'Brien


Róisín is a dance artist and writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She regularly writes for Springback Magazine, The Skinny and Seeing Dance, and has contributed to The Guardian and Film Stories. She loves being in the studio working on a new choreography with a group of dancers, or talking to brilliant people in the dance world about their projects and opinions. She tries not to spend too much time obsessing over Crystal Pite.

comments

Featured

Moving Portraits
REVIEWS | Gracia Haby

Moving Portraits

Beneath a tree also over a century old is where I meet dancer and artist Eileen Kramer, and where the 60-minute loop will end. And it feels fitting, on the heels of her recent death on November 15, 2024, at 110-years-of-age, to start here, at effectively the end of Sue Healey’s screening of On View: Icons.

FREE ARTICLE
Falling for Hubbard
REVIEWS | Roísín O'Brien

Falling for Hubbard

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Fall Series will entertain you. Deftly curated, with choreographers ranging from Aszure Barton to Bob Fosse, Hubbard’s dancers ably morph through this riveting programme of showmanship.

FREE ARTICLE
Good Subscription Agency