There might be no better combination of artists than choreographer Arthur Pita and Icelandic music superstar Björk. If you’ve never seen a ballet rave – and who has? – get ready. Pita delivers that and more with his second piece for the Company, Björk Ballet, an imaginative spectacle that will make you want to jump up and dance.
Pita never forgot the moment he first heard Björk’s music. During his training at London Contemporary Dance School, a friend introduced him to Björk’s album Debut, “which I loved so much,” he says. In thinking about his music for the Unbound festival, he wondered what he could do to make the dancers feel unbound. “And I thought, ‘The music is going to drive them,’ and immediately Björk made sense,” he says. “The music is so theatrical – it’s big, but in a modern way.” And, he reasoned, Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson is Icelandic. “I knew [Björk’s music] would mean something to him,” says Pita.
Ultimately, Björk Ballet is about birth, life, sex, and death, he says. When Björk sings – about love or joy, sex or death – “it comes from such a human place,” Pita says. For him, “All Is Full of Love” says everything. “It’s such a beautiful lyric – ‘You’ll be given love,’ and ‘You’ll be taken care of,’ ” he says. “What a beautiful message! We have to remember that we do have love in the world.”