Researching Choreographers

 

We chose Crystal Pite as our practitioner to research as we had watched a brief clip on her choreographic styles and methods she uses and wanted to learn more about her creative processes. I hadn’t seen any of her work before but I started to watch videos of her pieces and interviews. 

We mainly watched her interviews to have a better understanding of why she has made certain choreographic choices and how she decides what she will do. We also watched clips from one of her more recent works called ‘Flight Pattern’ to see how she uses movement to convey her objective statement.

 I have learnt that Crystal Pite often uses her choreographic works to express and encapsulate different emotions to the audience in attempt to create a deeper relationship between the audience and the performers (Anderson, 2017). We had also learnt from our research that Pite mainly uses her choreographic works to ‘address the human condition’, (Jennings, 2017). By exploring her chosen theme as a narrative in the first half or her work she returns to the second which an increased amount abstract physical movement (Piquero Álvarez, 2021). 

For example, her ballet ‘Flight pattern’ focuses on the theme of the humanitarian crisis. By using a fluid and ‘loose torso and grounded movement’ (Piquero Álvarez,2021). Alongside motifs carried on throughout the performance, there is an increased use of lines with periods where the performers are waiting and each time the motif is repeated it becomes more exaggerated and dramatic. And by increasing the pace of the movements towards the middle, Pite deliberately creates a rising tension to portray the stressful and drastic nature of the humanitarian crisis, (Piquero Álvarez,2021). Crystal Pite’s work has demonstrated to our group how effective motifs can be and how to use expressive yet moments of stillness successfully. 

Overall, it has given us an insight into different ways of choreographing and how to manipulate our ideas into movement.

 

Bibliography:

Anderson, Z. (2017). ‘"Flight Pattern, The Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House, London, review: has immense scale and ambition”. London, W. Locke.

Jennings, L. (2017). "Royal Ballet triple bill review – five stars for Crystal Pite" London, W. Locke.

Piquero Álvarez, L. (2021) ‘The Oxford Handbook of contemporary ballet’, ‘On Physicality and Narrative: Crystal Pite's Flight Pattern (2017)’ pages 457-473. New York, Oxford University Press.