It seems a little odd, considering the scope and scale of Crystal Pite's career, that she would ever use a word like "fake" to describe anything about herself.
The Victoria-born, Vancouver-based choreographer has earned the words "internationally-acclaimed" that often precedes her name. Her career as a professional dance-maker has taken her around the globe and garnered her a slew of awards, including a Governor General Performing Arts Award.
Her brand is strong. Her performances routinely sell out at home and abroad. Companies are eager to dance her choreography. Dance in Canada doesn't get much bigger than Crystal Pite. How can there be anything fake about her?
And yet faking it, according to Pite (who sat down with WE as her company rehearsed to tour her 2011 work, ), is "one of the most important skills of my life: how to fake it and wing it and just jump in and pretend that I know what I'm doing."
It's a skill that Pite put to good use at the age of 17, when she joined Ballet BC as an apprentice dancer and found herself dazzled and intimidated by the dance veterans around her.
"I don't think I'd ever even done a double pirouette on pointe by the time I got there, but I had to keep up, and if I didn't know how to do something, I just had to pretend that I did," says Pite, 43. "I was in survival mode."
But she learned, and she survived, and by the time she departed Ballet BC to join William Forsythe's celebrated Ballett Frankfurt at the age of 25, she was an award-winning veteran dancer and an emerging in-demand choreographer. Faking time over, right?
Wrong. "Again I was faking and imitating and pretending until I could assimilate what I needed to assimilate in order to really feel like I belonged," she said. "It was such a challenging company to be in. It was so wonderful."
Pite's five years with Ballett Frankfurt catapulted her into the global spotlight. When she finally moved on, it was back to Vancouver, which she calls a city rich with dance. She founded her company Kidd Pivot here in 2002.
Much has changed for Pite since then, including this biggie: she doesn't dance on stage anymore. "There's a separation that has happened because I'm not on stage with the dancers now, and I feel a sense of loss. I accept it, but I do miss it a lot," she says.
"What is wonderful is that it's put me in the position of having to deliver more and more of what they can do rather than getting them to do what I can do. That's been a visceral experience for me, because I feel like I can still dance through them, and because I'm dancing through them, I'm dancing better than ever. It's not at all what I feared."
Today, she crafts choreography for Kidd Pivot and dance juggernauts such as the National Ballet of Canada, Netherlands Dans Theatre, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, Alberta Ballet, and Ballet BC. Works for Kidd Pivot include Lost Action, Dark Matters, The You Show, and The Tempest Replica.
Pite's "fake it til you make it" philosophy extends to her choreography, perhaps now more than ever before. "I think I'm more terrified now as a choreographer than I was in those early years, because when you first start, there's not a lot of expectation, there's not a lot of pressure. Ten years into a full-on choreographic career, you're feeling all of that expectation and pressure."
By all accounts, Pite is exceeding every expectation thrown her way. The Tempest Replica was a hit when it premiered and toured in 2011, and again when it was remounted in 2012.
The work for six dancers is representative of Pite's interest in the structures and devices of story. "I've always been interested in story, but I'm working with narrative in a more overt way."
In Pite's take on Shakespeare's The Tempest, audiences are treated to an onstage storyboard where the narrative is delivered through gesture, posture, and text projections. "This is not a story that most people know, so I knew I had to tell the story properly in order that they'd be able to invest in the performance," she says.
The Tempest Replica was born during a period of paradigm-shifting change in Pite's life: in December 2010, Pite and her partner Jay welcomed their son Niko to the world.
"The other day, [Niko] jumped up on my bed and he did this big, wide stance and he put his hands on his hips and he said, 'Let's dance like Kidd Pivot men.' And he started doing these crazy karate chops and fancy spins and all of these amazing flip flop kamikaze dance moves. It was so exciting."
SFU Woodward's is presenting The Tempest Replica at SFU's Goldcorp Centre for the Arts at the start of its 10-city, three-continent tour. There is a preview on March 5 and performances are March 6, 7 and 8 at 8pm. Tickets: $49, $39, $29 + GST and service charges. Preview: $29. Tickets and details .
