The collaboration between choreographer Crystal Pite and writer Jonathon Young began with Betroffenheit, a searing study of grief, and continued with The Statement and Revisor, images of politics and bureaucracy in action. Now they present Assembly Hall – a portrait of an amateur medieval re-enactment society that is both serious and really very funny.
The uniqueness of Pite and Young’s work together doesn’t just lie in the style they have developed, where dancers lip-sync with fluid, split-second timing and large-gestured grace to words spoken by actors. It also springs from the uniqueness of their combined imagination, which here conjures a world in which the petty machinations of the Benevolent and Protective Order, meeting in a rundown community hall, can slip into Arthurian quests and extended slo-mo battles.
