Critique 3 – Crystal Pite : Flight Pattern

Over the course of this blog, I will be critiquing and reviewing Crystal Pite's work Flight Pattern as recorded for the Royal Opera House in 2019.

The piece begins with a woman sitting cross-legged on the floor right of the stage, huddling over. The stage is dark spare a single spotlight illuminating the woman and casting shadows on the dancers' bodies lying at random in the background. The woman begins moving slightly in a series of slow contractions and looks, surviving her surroundings. As she does a series of lunges turning to the front, it becomes clear that she's cradling a swaddled baby, rocking and appearing to hush them. As she stands, we can clearly see her costume consists of a grey tank top, black trousers, and a slick low ponytail, all of which adds to the sense of bleak despair the piece is emanating at this point.

The rest of the piece continues in a series of partner work and as the dancers as a unified body. Something I noted is that the partner work usually appeared quite one-sided, with one dancer doing the majority of the lifting. I found the choreography, while heavy to watch, to be very eye-pleasing, with the dancers making the work appear fluid and effortless.

As for my inter[atation of the message of the piece, at first, during the scene with the woman and child, I thought it could possibly be about child loss as, quite literally, the woman loses her child and is distraught. However, as the piece continued, I felt there was another theme, possibly of poverty or forced migration. I came to this conclusion due to the bleak atmosphere that was apparent with the piece even before it began. The was the dancers are continuously huddled together or hunched over for the majority of the piece as if having broken morals along with them portraying an intense sense of loss and hopelessness also adds to this for me.

Overall I really enjoyed watching the trailer for this piece and it effectively hooked my curiosity to find out how the rest of Piets work played out.

Bibliography:

Royal Opera House, 2019. Flight Pattern – Crystal Pite (Kristen McNally, Marcelino Sambé; The Royal Ballet). [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrNfZ6pCn9M> [Accessed 30 November 2021].