'Coming together is itself an act of resistance': Crystal Pite makes long-awaited Korea debut

Dance master Pite brings 'Assembly Hall' to Seoul

Performances run Friday through Sunday at LG Arts Center

Work explores human solidarity and division

Crystal Pite, "Assembly Hall" [Courtesy of LG Arts Center]

People have always gathered in community halls — to celebrate a marriage, to mourn a death, to hold elections, mark graduations, run sports days, or sit through an unremarkable committee meeting. In that most ordinary of spaces, choreographer Crystal Pite found the most fundamental questions about human society.

"A community hall is, in fact, a space of transformation," she said.

So begins "Assembly Hall," the latest work by Crystal Pite, 56, a five-time Olivier Award winner widely credited with reshaping the landscape of contemporary dance. The piece follows members of a medieval re-enactment society as they convene for a meeting — but what it truly examines is not the petty friction of a hobby club. At its core lies the human will to hold a community together, and the fractures that appear the moment that will begins to fail.

Six years in the making. A planned Korea visit was derailed by the pandemic in 2020, and only now has it finally come to pass. Pite and her company Kidd Pivot bring "Assembly Hall" to LG Arts Center Seoul, with performances running June 5 through June 7.

In a written interview ahead of the Seoul run, Pite said she is still struck by the simple fact that audiences choose to come to the theater at all. "People gathering together in one time and one place to seriously experience a work of art — that resonates deeply with me," she said.

"There are so many forces in the world right now that isolate us from one another. Coming to the theater can feel like a small act of resistance. I hope audiences feel that what we offer has been made and given with love and hope."

The resistance she describes is not a grand political declaration. It is the act of sitting together in a darkened room, watching the same moment unfold — a gesture, in itself, toward the restoration of community.

Choreographer Crystal Pite [Courtesy of LG Arts Center]

Community is the thread running through all of Pite's work. The characters in "Assembly Hall" share a passion for medieval re-enactment, but as time passes they grow weary and fall into conflict. They came together to protect something they love — and that very love becomes the seed of their division.

"It is a space of transformation where weddings and memorials, sporting events and community gatherings, dances, graduations and elections take place — all manner of assemblies and rituals and rites of passage," Pite said. "You witness the very small politics and conflicts that arise whenever people are trying to accomplish something together." The effort to sustain a shared activity, she explained, paradoxically generates internal tension and fracture.

But Pite does not stop there. She pulls the camera back — zooms out — to broaden the conversation into one about human unity and its opposite: division.

"You see how necessary and yet how fragile the structures we have built in order to live together really are — things like rules of order, religion, democracy. They are all painstakingly constructed to hold our ideals of fairness and community."

Through the work, Pite slides between the real and the mythic, pressing deep questions about human nature and the primal forces that drive us.

For Pite, dance is an indispensable element in creating the illusion of being alive. In "Assembly Hall," she throws herself fully into the concept of animation — the most fundamental and philosophical of questions: what is consciousness?

"The subtle rise and fall of a chest, the flutter of an eyelid, the tiniest tension caught at a fingertip. We move, and through movement we appear to exist. Like the animator or the puppeteer who breathes a soul into the inanimate — that fleeting instant when life seems to enter — both the puppet and the one who moves it embody together the mystery of existence, consciousness, presence and creation."

"Assembly Hall" begins with the act of giving life through movement, Pite added, and ends with that same act.

Language is another quality that sets her work apart. Among contemporary choreographers, Pite is one of the most inventive in her use of text. Working alongside longtime collaborator Jonathan Young, she places language and movement in juxtaposition — the actor's voice and the dancer's body, word and action, neither fully aligned nor fully separated, generating a distinctive tension between them.

Pite likens the relationship between language and choreography to that between the conscious and the unconscious. The body reveals sensations, desires and unconscious impulses that words cannot explain, while text expands their meaning. In the subtle gap between language and action, she finds the complexity of human existence.

Her work departs from reality and gradually drifts into myth. "Assembly Hall" opens with a recognizable committee meeting before expanding into the realm of mythic imagination — a passage, Pite explains, into the essence of human existence.

"Myth is a place where you can encounter the primal forces that move human beings. Ultimately, every work needs drama. We are very interested in how, amid the inherent imperfection and chaos of being human, we can sustain the ideals of community and solidarity. We are instinctively made to crave connection and a sense of oneness. Why is it so hard to sustain? That question is also at the heart of what this work explores."

It is why reality and fantasy, comedy and tragedy coexist within a single piece. Human beings are imperfect and chaotic, yet they dream of community — and that contradiction is itself the source of drama.

Founded in 2002, Kidd Pivot is the laboratory where that exploration runs deepest. Pite has collaborated with Nederlands Dans Theater, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Royal Ballet and other leading companies worldwide, but she says her own company allows for work that is far more complex and long-term in scope. Over years of touring, the pieces continue to change and grow.

Her vision extends beyond the stage. Since 2015, Kidd Pivot has pursued a carbon neutrality touring initiative, putting environmental responsibility into practice. "As artists and as human beings, we are constantly trying to balance our love for the world with the unavoidable reality that our very existence leaves some mark upon it," Pite said.

"Assembly Hall" is ultimately a question: why do humans divide even as they seek solidarity, and why do they need one another yet so easily come apart? But it begins not with grand ideology or political slogans — it begins with a small meeting in a community hall. Pite said she wanted to capture on stage the most beautiful moments that imperfect people create when they come together. "When human beings collaborate and breathe together with an audience, we can create an image of aliveness and consciousness," she said. "That is an act of imagination — a serious reenactment of creation and the mystery of being inhabited by a soul."

shee@heraldcorp.com