Crystal Pite: "Lost Action"

This is inspired, expressive and exhilarat-ing. I’ve said it before, and it bears repeating: hers is a glorious and charged landscape where physicality triumphs over all. For this impressive work, she’s put together a stellar cast of some of Canada’s best contemporary dancers (Eric Beauchesne, Francine Liboiron, Yannick Matthon, Anne Plamondon, Victor Quijada, Pite herself, plus American Malcolm Low); reason enough to queue up for this in-demand performance.

The mercurial nature of dance inspired Pite to build a choreography based on the themes of loss and disappearance, relating to the dancing body as well as surfacing in the sub-theme of the conflict of war and the sustained memory of the stories of World War I veterans. Both ideas – the compelling metaphor of the vanishing body and the loss of the wartime Vets – are reconciled in Pite’s work. The men in the cast work with strong movements, tussling in an interconnected chain, breaking out, and then merging again. Initially the soundtrack is filled with bonhomie, but as the guys grip, drag and pull, aggression and confrontation transform the group. Grace and power do too. The bodies melt into a heap on the floor. Pite’s strength ...