Associate choreographer
Photo: Anoush Abrar, Rolex
Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite is a former company member of Ballet British Columbia and William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt.
In a choreographic career spanning 35 years, Pite has created more than sixty works for companies such as The Royal Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, The Paris Opera Ballet, and the National Ballet of Canada. She is known for works that courageously address themes such as trauma, addiction, conflict, consciousness and mortality; her bold and original vision has earned her international acclaim and inspired an entire generation of dance artists.
She is an Associate Artist at three institutions: Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), Sadler’s Wells (London) and Canada’s National Arts Centre. She has an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Simon Fraser University, is a Member of the Order of Canada and holds the honour of Officier de l’Ordre of Arts et des Lettres from France.
In 2002, she formed Kidd Pivot in Vancouver, a company that strives to distill and translate universal questions into artworks that connect us to essential parts of humanity. World-renowned for radical hybrids of dance and theatre, Kidd Pivot tours internationally with critically-acclaimed works such as Betroffenheit, Revisor, and Assembly Hall (co-created with Jonathon Young), The Tempest Replica, Dark Matters, Lost Action, and The You Show.
Pite’s many awards include the 2022 Governor General of Canada’s Performing Arts Award, the 2011 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award and the Canada Council’s 2012 Jacqueline Lemieux Prize. In 2017, she received the Benois de la Danse for her creation The Seasons’ Canon at the Paris Opera Ballet. In 2018, she received the Grand Prix de la danse de Montréal. She is the recipient of five Sir Laurence Olivier awards for creations with Kidd Pivot and The Royal Ballet.
For NDT 1, Pite has created the following works: Pilot X (2005), The Second Person (2007), Frontier (2008), Plot Point (2010, nominated for the Benois de la Danse), Solo Echo (2012), Parade (2013), In the Event (2015), The Statement (2016), Partita for 8 Dancers (2018), and Kunstkamer (2019). In 2023, Pite worked with the dancers of NDT 2 for the first time to create Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue.
A remarkable project within the more than fifteen years that Pite has been associated with NDT is the Figures in Extinction trilogy. Over a period of four years, Pite and Complicité’s artistic director Simon McBurney created three works for NDT 1, each developed in response to the previous, reflecting on the climate crisis and the fragility of humankind. Figures in Extinction [1.0] – the list (2022) was awarded the Zwaan for Most Impressive Dance Production. Both subsequent works – Figures in Extinction [2.0] – but then you come to the humans (2024) and Figures in Extinction [3.0] – requiem (2025) – were also widely acclaimed by audiences nationally and internationally. The complete trilogy was honoured with a Sky Arts Award in the Dance category in 2025.
