Credit: Michael Slobodian
Vancouver Playhouse
No more performances
Posted October 29, 2023
Assembly Hall, the latest collaboration between Jonathon Young and Crystal Pite once again yields strange but beautiful fruit. Young is best known as an actor/theatre maker and co-founder of the Electric Company Theatre; and Pite, a dancer/choreographer, is the founder and artistic director of Kidd Pivot, a contemporary dance company based in Vancouver. Their professional partnership began with the nationally and internationally acclaimed Betroffenheit that went on to win the coveted Laurence Olivier Best New Dance Production back in 2017. This was followed by Revisor that won that coveted award again in 2022. Created and directed by Pite and Young, this world premiere of Assembly Hall is presented by DanceHouse as part of its 2023-2024 season.
On the surface – and there are levels upon levels in this new work – we find eight characters in what appears to be a shabby gym or assembly hall: a basketball hoop, a ball and a small raised proscenium stage with a red curtain. These characters are members of a club committed to re-enactment of medieval events, mainly combat. This is the evening of their AGM and on the table is a motion to cancel Quest Fest, an annual event, after many years of performance. Funding has fallen off and recruitment has managed to bring in only one new member. But a quorum is required and not everyone agrees with the motion to cancel. The deciding vote is left to Dave, the new member, who is decidedly an outsider, not on the executive as all the others are and who is completely indecisive, even disinterested. Running the meeting, strictly according to Robert’s Rules of Order, is Shaun.
But this meeting is only the starting point of a deep dive into our human desire to bring order out of chaos, to belong, to maintain peace in spite of what appears to be our species’ innate predisposition to war. Robert’s Rules may work in running meetings but life doesn’t follow these rules.
Technically, Assembly Hall is fascinating with eight characters/dancers (Brandon Ailey, Livona Ellis, Rakeem Hardy, Gregory Lau, Doug Letheren, Rena Narumi, Ella Rothschild and Renée Sigouin), each of whom has an unseen, actual actor providing pre-recorded voice-over: Ryan Beil, Marci T. House, Alessandro Juliani, Meg Roe, Gabrielle Rose, Amanda Sum, Vincent Tong and Jonathon Young.
At the outset, each of the characters moves – with exaggerated gestures – to the words spoken by the voice-over actor assigned to his or her character. Actor Ryan Beil, for example, is the voice for Dave. Gabrielle Rose voices Glenda. In a way, words have become the music to which they move. And in a way, each dancer appears almost to be the puppet of their unseen speaker. It is, to say the least, mesmerizing.
Of course there is also music, including Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23 as well as the static-y sound of an old projector. And there is, obviously, dance.
In Crystal Pite’s inimitable way, the choreography is fierce, lovely, deathly, sometimes robotic and simply magnificent: bodies in motion, bodies winding themselves together and tearing apart, bodies carried aloft, bodies reaching, flying, tumbling, collapsing. Even when I struggled to understand the narrative or the level of reality at which we found ourselves at certain points, the choreography and performances were spellbinding.
Reality comes and goes. Now we are in the assembly hall, now we are watching the re-enactment of a medieval battle with swords and armour. Now we are in the middle of what appears to be a ballet with a grief-stricken ballerina in a frothy costume of white net. Her knight has been killed and perhaps Dave is to blame? And finally we have a dancer completely encased in shiny metal armour, clanking his way across the stage.
Pite and Young are pushing boundaries so far it is easy to get lost but the total effect is so wondrous, mythic and magical that Assembly Hall dazzles.
Set design – another liminal space that Young loves to play in – is by Jay Gower Taylor and it’s evocatively, almost creepily lit by Tom Visser: shadowy, tawdry, a beyond-the-grave palette.
Costumes – grey on grey on black and fantastic armour and helmets in the combat scenes – are designed by Nancy Bryant with the aluminum armour built by Rob Valentine and Valentine Armouries. Sound design is created by Owen Belton, Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe.
Assembly Hall is a tremendously challenging piece for the audience as well as the dancers. It takes time to process. Regardless, when experiencing collaborations between Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young, one is aware that something exciting is happening; something bold, something brilliant, something mind-bending is going on. Assembly Hall is no exception. After this world premiere in Vancouver, Assembly Hall moves on to Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Quebec City and then Europe where it will, undoubtedly and deservedly, take city after city by storm.