There is a unique kind of electricity that comes from the anticipation of a world premiere. You have no clue what’s to come, but you’re pretty sure it’s going to blow your mind.

Assembly Hall—the latest work from Vancouver-based dance company Kidd Pivot—had its world premiere last night (October 26) at the Vancouver Playhouse. The packed theatre was buzzing before the curtain opened, with a mix of professional dancers, dance enthusiasts, and curious but dedicated arts patrons filling the house.

The show, choreographed by Kidd Pivot’s renowned founder Crystal Pite and created in collaboration with Jonathon Young of Electric Company Theatre, follows a group of medieval reenactors who have gathered for their annual general meeting. The main item on the agenda? Whether or not to dissolve the organization due to dwindling attendance and lack of funds.

The collective artistic mastery of long-time collaborators Pite and Young was evident once again here, with the show’s combination of theatre and dance feeling specific yet completely organic.

Key points of the story were set up and propelled forward through voice over, which was lip-synced and danced out by the performers. The result was engaging, with each dancer given a character, a voice, and a purpose that they acted through Pite’s signature style of modern choreographed movement. Every sideways look, every shrug of the shoulders, every placement of the feet felt carefully planned.

“We are always going to say that we’re reenacting things, because we’re theatremakers—but [it’s especially true] with the way we work particularly, because the dancers are embodying a voiceover recording that we did with eight voice actors,” Pite said in a phone interview earlier this year, when the show was still in the production phase. “We already have that layer of reenactment in our show just inherently. And we’re fascinated by how even though it’s a degree or two removed from the real, we’re embodying a voice—we’re basically wearing someone’s voice when we perform.”

The scenes of dialogue were interspersed with sections of full-blown contemporary dance, which explored some of the show’s deeper themes of community, identity, loneliness, and purpose. Pite’s style of movement is complex and deeply emotional—at times the dancers flowed like water, while at others they moved abruptly, like staccato.

As always, her choreography shines in its opposition: whether it was one dancer on stage or the entire cast; whether they moved as a group or individually; or whether it waas some combination of it all, the throughline was that there is beauty and power in juxtaposition. Constant movement folding in on itself, coupled with stillness. Giant moments that take up space, paired with quiet breaths. It’s possible to hold contrasting ideas at the same time, and make room for both of them.

“I’m really enjoying the staging of various tableaux the way reenactors might stage a battle scene or a scene of a great defeat,” Pite said. “We get in that content these very, very physical and dynamic stock images: images that are still but that, in their stillness, contain incredible complexity.”

With plenty of battle scenes, intricate soundscapes that sampled everything from words to clashing swords, and a good dose of humour sprinkled throughout, the show ran for a bit under two hours, without an intermission—but it truly went by in a flash. Which was, undoubtedly, a product of the thoughful storytelling work of Pite and Young, but also of the gorgeous dancers who occupied the stage and who brought this layered vision to life through, aside from the odd prop, only their physical bodies.

Whether or not you completely follow the story that unfolds (it certainly veers deeply into the symbolic and the esoteric), Assembly Hall makes clear that it wants you to think about the concept of belonging. What does it feel like to come together, united under a common purpose? And what does it feel like to let go of that purpose? And what does it feel like to hold onto your identity among the collective, or, alternatively, to lose it? 

The show doesn’t have the answers. The best art never does.

The show is at the Vancouver Playhouse until October 28.