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Crystal Pite (with text by Jonathon Young): The Statement. 29.11.2017, Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT 1) at Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Berlin.

One act, four characters, one problem: the issue is indistinct but serious, and, as with such problems, someone is sent down from upstairs, on the record/off the record.

We are all familiar with dark ambiguities, with that bureaucratic dialogue, we hear the back and forth spoken and know it as our own, but now it is underlined with movement outrageous, dangerous, sharp, and desperate, now it is peeled back with physicality fragile, courageous, and raw.

The physicality is impossibly apt, impossibly virtuosic yet impossibly necessary, sometimes affirming our opinions, at other times denying us, surprising us, dismantling us — so much movement and yet all meaningful — the harm that banal evil wrecks upon our souls unquestionable.

Trembling, shaken, grateful applause.

An immensely important work for the possibility of dance to alter perspective –– and a startling theatrical, political, artistic, and choreographic achievement.