Crystal Pite: Light of Passage

Address

Kirsten Flagstads Plass 1,
0150 Oslo

Crystal Pite: Light of Passage

Description

Crystal Pite's shattering and moving masterpiece is back - with the entire Nasjonalballetten on stage. Large-scale, brutal ensemble work When Nasjonalballetten danced the three-act Light of Passage to full houses in Oslo and Paris in 2023 and 2024, audiences and critics were once again shaken and thrilled at the same time. Now Crystal Pite's painfully topical masterwork is danced again on Hovedscenen. Once in a rare while a production comes so close to perfection SIDSEL PAPE, AFTENPOSTEN 2023 Flight Pattern was Crystal Pite's first work for The Royal Ballet in London. This also made her the first woman in 18 years to choreograph for the opera house's main stage, when the piece premiered in 2017. The monumental one-act work was met with great enthusiasm among the critics, and was rewarded with the Laurence Olivier Award for best new dance production. Taking Flight Pattern as her starting point, Crystal Pite developed the work into a rare full-evening piece, which also consists of the second act Covenant and the third act Passage. Fearless and empathetic to Górecki Light of Passage is danced to Górecki's «Symfony of Sorrowful Songs», which is often associated with the Holocaust, and explores themes of motherhood and family separation. Pite gives these themes new meaning, in a work that moves from the big picture of displaced communities to approaching individuals. The large cast of dancers moves as one body, row upon row, tightly packed, before one desperate couple steps out of the crowd in a gripping pas de deux. A refugee crisis is also a children's crisis: Every fifth second another child is driven to flee. The second act takes as its starting point the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, while the third act depicts the ultimate journey we all must go through: from life to death. «This is the story of our time», says choreographer Crystal Pite. The stage is filled with the dancers of Nasjonalballetten as well as children and older dancers. Through the symphony's three movements they take us through the passages of life and of humanity.