Assembly Hall, winner of Best New Dance Production at the Olivier Awards 2025, will be performed at the Shanghai International Dance Center in June.

The production is presented by Kidd Pivot, the company founded by Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, and marks the work's Chinese mainland premiere.

Pite, celebrated for her mastery of narrative and physical innovation, consistently pushes the boundaries between dance and theater, employing striking physical language to explore questions of humanity and collective experience.

Assembly Hall opens with a meeting of a historical reenactment society on the verge of disbanding. A rundown community hall gradually transforms into an imaginary battlefield, where medieval knights, absurd rituals, and fragments of everyday life overlap and collide. Amid seemingly chaotic group actions, the work asks a fundamental question: why do human beings gather together to sustain a shared sense of meaning? Tradition and power structures, collective decision-making, and individual desire intertwine, building an allegory about identity, belonging, and contemporary society.

Sound functions as another driving force in the piece. The dancers' bodies are propelled by dialogue, breath, rhythm, and emotion, creating a relationship between movement and sound that is both tightly synchronized and slightly dislocated. Audiences are invited to "hear" the story unfolding as they watch it, a cross-disciplinary approach widely regarded as one of the most creative and influential forms on the international stage today.

Following award-winning works such as Betroffenheit and Revisor, Kidd Pivot continues its exploration of narrative and the power of language as an animating force with this new production that blends dance and theater.

If you go

When: June 12-13, 7:30 pm; June 14, 2 pm

Where: Grand Theater, Shanghai International Dance Center, No 1650 Hongqiao Road, Changning district

Duration: Approximately 90 minutes (no intermission)

Ticket prices: 80 yuan ($11.77) to 1,080 yuan

Source: Shanghai International Dance Center