Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T12:57:22.161Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Textual Matters: Making Narrative and Kinesthetic Sense of Crystal Pite's Dance-Theater

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2014

Peter Dickinson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, I examine the work created by Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite for her company Kidd Pivot, placing it within a larger tradition of dance-theater that combines text and movement, and traffics openly in big emotions and even bigger narrative structures. I argue that Pite's use of text does not just offer a way into, or a representational gloss on, her otherwise abstract movement vocabulary, but also a means of affectively and even kinesthetically re-experiencing that movement post-performance. I focus on Pite's three most recent evening-length programs for Kidd Pivot, and on the different modes of textual address employed therein (voice-over narration, projection, live speech). My goal in analyzing the choreographer's narrative scripts alongside her physical ones is to highlight, on the one hand, the materiality of words within the total sensory environments created by Pite through her dance-theater performances and, on the other, to emphasize their consequentiality in helping to make somatic sense of one's memories of those performances.

Keywords

AffectCrystal Pitedance-theaterKidd Pivotkinesthesiaperformance postscriptstext in dance
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , April 2014 , pp. 61 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Agamben, Giorgio. 2000. Means Without End: Notes on Politics. Translated by Binetti, Vincenzo and Casrarino, Cesare. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Banes, Sally. 1987. Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Banes, Sally. 1993 [1983]. Democracy's Body: Judson Dance Theater, 1962–1964. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Barton, Bruce. 2009. “Paradox as Process: Intermedial Anxiety and the Betrayals of Intimacy.” Theatre Journal 61(4): 575–601.Google Scholar
Bogart, Anne, and Landau, Tina. 2005. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. New York: Theatre Communications Group.Google Scholar
Brennan, Teresa. 2004. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Burt, Ramsay. 2006. Judson Dance Theater. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Randall, Steven. Berkeley, CA: University of California PressGoogle Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. Cinema I: The Movement-Image. Translated by Tomlinson, Hugh and Habberjam, Barbara. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Dickinson, Peter. 2014. “Cédric Andrieux: With Bel, Benjamin, and Brecht in Vancouver.” TDR: The Drama Review 58(3): forthcoming.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2002. “Walking and Other Choreographic Tactics: Danced Inventions of Theatricality and Performativity.” SubStance 31(2–3): 125–46.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2011. Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gallese, Vittorio. 2008. “Empathy, Embodied Simulation and the Brain: Commentary on Aragno and Zepf/Hartmann.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 56: 769–81.Google Scholar
Gibson, James J. 1983 [1966]. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” In Style in Language, edited by Sebeok, Thomas, 350–77. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Pivot, Kidd. 2012. “Company.” http://kiddpivot.org/company/company.Google Scholar
Lavery, Carl. 2009. “Is There a Text in This Performance?” Performance Research 14(1): 37–45.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Hans-Thies. 2006. Postdramatic Theatre. Translated by Jürs-Munby, Karen. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried. 1952 [1709]. Theodicy. Edited by Farrer, Austin. Translated by Farrer, Austin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lepage, Robert, and Pite, Crystal. 2012. “Creative Collaborations: Lepage & Pite in Conversation.” Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, SFU Woodward's, Vancouver, November 8.Google Scholar
Lepecki, André. 2006. Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1923. “The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages.” In The Meaning of Meaning, edited by Ogden, Charles K. and Richards, I. A., 146–52. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
McConachie, Bruce. 2008. Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Murphy, Maiya. 2012. “Fleshing Out: Physical Theater, Postmodern Dance, and Som[e]agency.” Presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Society for Theatre Research, Nashville, TN, November 1–4.Google Scholar
Murray, Simon, and Keefe, John, eds. 2007. Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Overlie, Mary. 2006. “The Six Viewpoints.” In Training the American Actor, edited by Bartow, Arthur, 187–222. New York: Theatre Communications Group.Google Scholar
Pavis, Patrice. 2003. Analyzing Performance: Theater, Dance, and Film. Translated by Williams, David. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Pepper, Kaija. 2012. “Stories with Legs.” The Walrus.ca. http://thewalrus.ca/stories-with-legs/.Google Scholar
Phelan, Peggy. 1993. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pite, Crystal. 2010. Artist's Talk. Mixed Repertoire. Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, Burnaby, British Columbia, October 9.Google Scholar
Pite, Crystal. 2011. Artist's Talk. The You Show. The Vancouver East Cultural Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, May 11.Google Scholar
Pite, Crystal. 2012a. Artist's Talk. The Tempest Replica. Vancouver Playhouse, Vancouver, British Columbia, November 10.Google Scholar
Pite, Crystal. 2012b. “The Dance Enthusiast Asks: Crystal Pite.” Interview with Christine Jowers. The Dance Enthusiast. http://www.dance-enthusiast.com/features/view/268/.Google Scholar
Pope, Alexander. 2009 [1733–34]. “An Essay on Man.” In The Major Works, edited by Rogers, Pat, 270–308. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, Rebecca. 2011. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. 1997 [1611]. The Tempest. In The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Greenblatt, S. et al. , 3047–107. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Shanley, John Patrick. 2005. Doubt: A Parable. New York: Dramatists Play Service.Google Scholar
Shaw, Nancy. 2006. Lost and Found: Kidd Pivot, Dance Documenta, No. 2. Vancouver: Eponymous Productions and Arts Society.Google Scholar
Sklar, Deirdre. 2007. “Unearthing Kinesthesia: Groping Among Cross-Cultural Models of the Senses in Performance.” In The Senses in Performance, edited by Banes, Sally and Lepecki, André, 38–46. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Smith, Janet. 2010. “Crystal Pite Plays the Puppetmaster in Dark Matters.” The Georgia Straight, Feb 18. http://www.straight.com/article-290358/vancouver/pite-plays-puppetmaster.Google Scholar
Smith, Janet. 2014. “After Break, Pite Is Back—Big Time.” The Georgia Straight, February 26. http://www.straight.com/arts/593806/after-break-crystal-pite-back-big-time.Google Scholar
Stuart, Meg, and Goods, Damaged. 2010. Are We Here Yet? Edited by Peeters, Joroen. Dijon, France: Presses du reel.Google Scholar
Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Voltaire. 1912 [1755]. “Poem on the Lisbon Disaster; or an Examination of the Axiom ‘All is Well.’” In Toleration and Other Essays, translated by McCabe, Joseph, 255–63. New York: G.P. Putnam and Sons.Google Scholar
Voltaire. 2000 [1756]. “Preface to the Poem on the Lisbon Disaster.” In Candide and Related Texts, edited by Wootton, David, 95–8. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.Google Scholar
Welton, Martin. 2007. “Seeing Nothing: Now Hear This …” In The Senses in Performance, edited by Banes, Sally and Lepecki, André, 146–55. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Welton, Martin. 2012. Feeling Theatre. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar