Canada Council’s Jacqueline Lemieux Prize Awarded to Kidd Pivot Dance Company's Artistic Director
/Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite – artistic director of Vancouver dance company Kidd Pivot – is the 2012 recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts’ Jacqueline Lemieux Prize (valued at $6,000), which is awarded annually to an established dance artist who has made a significant contribution to dance in Canada. The award will be presented to Pite on September 27 at a ceremony at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, immediately preceding the Canadian premiere of Kidd Pivot’s latest work, The Tempest Replica.
Of receiving this honour, Pite says, “I am so grateful to the Canada Council for this award; to be acknowledged by my peers in this way is wonderfully affirming and encouraging. I hope to honour the legacy of the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize through my work and discoveries in the years to come.”
In preparation for Kidd Pivot’s 10th anniversary season and the upcoming Canadian and international tour of The Tempest Replica – including performances in Vancouver on November 9 & 10 – Crystal Pite and her company of seven dancers return to the studio next week to remount The Tempest Replica.
The Vancouver public is invited to visit the company in rehearsals at two open studio events: August 31 and September 7, at 5pm, at SFU Woodward’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (149 West Hastings St). The events are free, and co-hosted with SFU Woodward’s.
About Crystal Pite
Born and raised on the Canadian West Coast, choreographer and performer Crystal Pite is a former company member of Ballet British Columbia and William Forsythe's Ballett Frankfurt.
Crystal’s choreographic debut was in 1990, at Ballet British Columbia. Since then, she has created works for Nederlands Dans Theater I, Cullberg Ballet, Ballett Frankfurt, The National Ballet of Canada, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal (Resident Choreographer, 2001-2004), Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Ballet British Columbia, Alberta Ballet, Ballet Jorgen, and several independent dance artists; most recently Louise Lecavalier. Crystal is Associate Choreographer of Nederlands Dans Theater and Associate Dance Artist of National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
In 2002 she formed Kidd Pivot and continues to create and perform in her own work. The company tours nationally and internationally, performing such highly demanded and critically acclaimed works as Dark Matters and Lost Action. Kidd Pivot's residency at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt (2010-2012) provided her the opportunity to create and tour her most recent works, The You Show and The Tempest Replica, with her dancers and collaborators.
Crystal is the recipient of the Banff Centre’s Clifford E. Lee Award (1995), the Bonnie Bird North American Choreography Award (2004), and the Isadora Award (2005). Her work has received several Dora Mavor Moore Awards (2009, 2012), and a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award (2006). She is the recipient of the 2008 Governor General of Canada’s Performing Arts Award, Mentorship Program. Most recently, she was awarded the 2011 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award and the 2012 Canada Council’s Jacqueline Lemieux Prize.
About Kidd Pivot
Integrating movement, original music, text, and rich visual design, Kidd Pivot’s performance work is assembled with recklessness and rigour, balancing sharp exactitude with irreverence and risk. Under the direction of internationally renowned Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, the company’s distinct choreographic language – a breadth of movement fusing classical elements and the complexity and freedom of structured improvisation – is marked by a strong theatrical sensibility and a keen sense of wit and invention.
Crystal Pite has collaborated with celebrated dance artists, theatre companies and filmmakers in Canada, Europe, and the United States. Since 2002, she has created and performed under the banner of her own company. Her work and her company have been recognized with numerous awards and commissions. Kidd Pivot tours extensively around the world with productions that include The Tempest Replica (2011), The You Show (2010), Dark Matters (2009), Lost Action (2006), and Double Story (2004), created with Richard Siegal. Kidd Pivot is the recipient of the 2006 Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, and was resident company at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, with the support of Kulturfonds Frankfurt Rhein Main, in Frankfurt, Germany from 2010 to 2012.
About the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize
The Jacqueline Lemieux Prize, valued at $6,000, is awarded annually to the most deserving applicant in the Grants to Dance Professionals Program at the Dance Section of the Canada Council for the Arts. Established in 1980, previous recipients of the prize include Marie Chouinard, Sylvain Émard, David Earle, Lola MacLaughlin, and Rachel Brown. The prize is given in memory of Jacqueline Lemieux's profound contribution to the development of Canadian dance. Lemieux was co-founder (with her husband, Lawrence Gradus) of the Montreal dance company Entre-Six, and of Québec Été Danse, a summer school in Lennoxville. Jacqueline Lemieux was a teacher, administrator and a member of the Canada Council for the Arts Advisory Panel.
For additional information:
Bonnie Sun, Marketing and Communications Manager
Phone: 604.683.6552
Email: bonnie@kiddpivot.org
Website: www.kiddpivot.org
