CRYSTAL Pite is one of the world’s most acclaimed and sought-after choreographers but Australia has only really caught glimpses of her extraordinary talent. Most recently, audiences saw a sample in the Australian Ballet’s Kunstkamer – the highlight, in my opinion. Yet she has created more than 50 works since choreographing her first professional piece for Ballet Columbia back in 1989 (and that’s not counting the dances she remembers, quite clearly, creating as a toddler). When I remark that this is a lot, she shrugs and disagrees, saying many of her colleagues are more prolific than she is.
Trained classically, an alumnus of William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt, she is a dancemaker who makes any division between classical and contemporary dance irrelevant. She has been choreographer-in-residence in Frankfurt in Germany and is currently associate artist with Sadlers Wells in the UK, Netherlands Dance Theatre and Canada’s National Arts Centre, all while running her cown company,
