Assembly Hall
Kidd Pivot (Vancouver)
Back by popular demand from DanceHouse's 2023/24 season
2025 Olivier award winner for “Best New Dance Production”
A group of medieval re-enactors have come together for an Annual General Meeting in their local community hall.
As the Board of Directors, they oversee an event called “Quest Fest” that has fallen on hard times: membership is dwindling, debt is mounting, and the hall is falling apart. Unless something drastic happens, the Directors of this venerable order will be facing dissolution. As the meeting progresses, the line between real and re-enactment begins to blur, ancient forces are awoken, and it soon becomes clear that there is something much more at stake here than a mock-medieval tournament.
From the team that brought you the ground-breaking, award-winning productions of Betroffenheit and Revisor,comes Kidd Pivot’s latest award-winning offering: a dance theatre hybrid that promises the company’s signature wit and invention. Fuelling Kidd Pivot’s work is a fascination with story and the role of language as an animating force.
Top image: Kidd Pivot, Assembly Hall © Michael Slobodian.
March 17-20, 2027 | 8pm
Vancouver Playhouse
600 Hamilton Street
Running time: approximately 90 minutes (no intermission)
7:15pm each night in the Upper Lobby
“Kidd Pivot’s often astonishing Assembly Hall finds power in contrast: voice-overs counterpoint movement, time periods collide, and atmospheres dissolve.”
Intermission Magazine
“Astonishingly beautiful. A wonder.”
The Guardian
“A mesmerizing rumination on purpose and belonging.”
The Georgia Straight
“A remarkable exploration of contrasts - light and dark, silliness and seriousness, the absurd and the real.”
Dance Debrief
World-renowned for radical hybrids of dance and theatre, Kidd Pivot creations are assembled with a keen sense of wit and invention. Led by Canadian choreographer and director Crystal Pite, the company is unflinching in the face of such challenging and complex themes as trauma, addiction, conflict, consciousness and mortality. Pite’s bold and original vision has earned her international acclaim and inspired an entire generation of dance artists.
Kidd Pivot strives to distill and translate universal questions into artworks that connect us to profound and essential parts of humanity. “Running through all of our work is the question of what moves us,” says Pite.
Kidd Pivot tours internationally with critically acclaimed works such as Betroffenheit and Revisor (both co-created with playwright Jonathon Young), The Tempest Replica, Dark Matters, Lost Action, and The You Show. Since 2015, Kidd Pivot has measured its touring carbon footprint and offset over 1000 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent), enabling Kidd Pivot to be one of the first dance companies to tour carbon neutral. Learn more about Kidd Pivot’s active efforts with 1Day for the Climate campaign here.
Kidd Pivot is a proud member of the Canadian Dance Assembly.
Artistic Director, Co-Creator, Choreographer, Director
In a choreographic career spanning thirty-five years, Crystal Pite has created more than sixty works for companies such as The Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, and The National Ballet of Canada. She is an Associate Artist at three institutions: Nederlands Dans Theater, Sadler’s Wells (London) and Canada’s National Arts Centre. She holds 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 her company Kidd Pivot in Vancouver. Kidd Pivot tours internationally with works such as Betroffenheit, Revisor and Assembly Hall, (co-created with Jonathon Young) as well as The Tempest Replica, Dark Matters, Lost Action, and The You Show.
Co-Creator, Writer and Director, Voice Actor
Jonathon Young is playwright-in-residence at Kidd Pivot and a core artist and co-founder of Electric Company Theatre, where he has created and performed in over 20 original productions since the company was formed in 1996. He has worked as an actor on stages across Canada including Soulpepper Theatre (King Lear), Coalmine Theatre (Knives in Hens), Luminato Festival, Vancouver Playhouse (Full Light of Day), Necessary Angel (All but Gone), Theatre Calgary, (No Exit, The Great Gatsby), Bard on the Beach (Hamlet). Assembly Hall is the third full-length work created with Crystal Pite after Betroffenheit (2015) and Revisor (2019). In addition, he wrote the text for two projects at Nederlands Dans Theater (Parade and The Statement). Jonathon is the recipient of the UK National Dance Award.
