Nine sinewy dancers rehearse a piece from Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM's latest work in a steamy Harbour Dance studio.

They're cozily clad in faded T-shirts, sweatpants and socks, but their advances are intimidating, their expressions fierce, eyes searing as they grab each other and shift between warrior-like poses.

Titled A Picture of You Flying, the only piece in The You Show not scored by longtime collaborator Owen Belton is performed to dark, urgent mega movie sci-fi type music complete with menacing crashes and mechanical sounds.

Crystal Pite, Kidd Pivot's artistic director and choreographer, was thinking of cartoons, superheroes, comic strips and graphic novels when she choreographed this number.

"The clenched jaw, the hand which is huge because it's way in the foreground reaching, and the torque of a neck," said the new mother who's sitting the performances out.

A more intimate affair than the local dance company's previous production Dark Matters, which captivated audiences at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, The You Show is comprised of four new works: A Picture of You Falling, The Other You, Das Glashaus (The Glasshouse) and A Picture of You Flying. Pite calls the pieces a series of portraits, furthering her fascination with familiar storylines of love, conflict and loss--narratives, she says, that viewers of any generation or culture can relate to.

The Canadian premiere of The You Show, which runs at The Cultch May 10 to 14, opens with A Picture of You Falling, a duet Pite created for dancers Anne Plamondon and Peter Chu in 2008. It's written in second person and includes voiceovers that ask the audience to locate themselves in the body of the performers.

One voiceover invites the audience to inhabit Chu in a scene of him breaking down.

"You see this deconstructed fall, this deconstructed collapse repetitively executed by Peter and you feel the emotion, I hope, when Peter's knees hit the floor, as he collapses," Pite said. "You feel that sense of your own knees hitting the ground, and that sense of defeat."

Pite debuted her choreography with Ballet B.C. in 1990. She has created works for companies that include Ballett Frankfurt, the National Ballet of Canada, Alberta Ballet and Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, where she was resident choreographer for three years. Pite is associate choreographer of Nederlands Dans Theater and associate dance artist at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

The native Victorian formed Kidd Pivot in 2001. The company's recent residency at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt provided her the opportunity to create The You Show with her dancers and collaborators. Künstlerhaus Mousonturm began supporting Kidd Pivot's work two years ago, proud to have Frankfurt RM (RM is the region of Germany) attached to the company's name. The You Show premiered in that city in November.

All four pieces in The You Show are written in second person, as inspired by Pite's favourite proverb: 'Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours."

"There's a lesson there for theatre making as well as life," Pite said.

For more information, see thecultch.com.

crossi@vancourier.com

Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi

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