Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern
By Caroline Dickie
Canada’s Crystal Pite is among the world’s leading dancemakers, renowned for exploring resonant, often existential questions about humanity through emotionally charged movement. Flight Pattern is a striking expression of this gift – a searching response to the refugee crisis that touches the individual and the collective at once, giving form to a profound experience of displacement, loss and community.
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Crystal Pite in rehearsal. Photo by Karolina Kuras.
Created in 2017, Flight Pattern was Pite’s first commission for The Royal Ballet, marking their first mainstage creation by a woman in 18 years. That trajectory began in Canada in 2009 when then Artistic Director Karen Kain invited Pite to create Emergence for The National Ballet of Canada. Until then, Pite had worked exclusively with smaller contemporary companies; Emergence demonstrated how readily her choreographic language translated to a large classical one. The success of Emergence led to major international commissions, including a second award-winning creation for the National Ballet with Angels’ Atlas in 2020.
Artistic Director Hope Muir is deepening the company’s connection to Pite’s choreography through Flight Pattern and has plans to present additional work from her in upcoming seasons. The association is longstanding: Muir assisted with the initial creation of Emergence and has staged it numerous times internationally. With Flight Pattern, she introduces a landmark work from Pite’s canon to North America.
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Siphesihle November in rehearsal for Flight Pattern. Photo by Ted Belton.
Pite explains how she chose the title for this work: “I was caught by the word 'flight' in its dual meaning; to flee, to escape, to leave an impossible situation, but also to fly with freedom, hope and possibility. 'Pattern' indicates repeating storylines that cross cultures and generations; the movement of humans over territory and time. The title originally emerged out of a small phrase of choreographic material that was identified as the 'flight pattern' during our creative process: a repeating pattern of rootedness and heaviness in the legs as the upper body and arms move like wings, seeking the air. Contained in that phrase is the tension between despair and hope.”
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Measha Brueggergosman-Lee. Photo by René Johnston.
The National Ballet is presenting Flight Pattern in its original one-act form, set to the first movement of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and featuring the celebrated Canadian Soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee in her National Ballet and Four Seasons Centre debut. It promises to be an unforgettable moment; in Muir’s words, one that is “certain to encourage powerful and important experiences for our Canadian audiences.”
Flight Pattern is onstage with Suite en Blanc February 27 – March 6.
Top Photo: Artists of the Ballet in rehearsal for Flight Pattern. Photo by Ted Belton.