Kidd Pivot's Revisor wins Britain's Olivier Award for best new dance production

Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young win the U.K.’s top performing-arts award for second time

KIDD PIVOT’S REVISOR, THE dance-theatre work that just closed here at DanceHouse, has just scored one of Britain’s Olivier Awards—that country’s version of the Tony Awards.

The Vancouver production, and its creators Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young, won the prize for best new dance production for its visit to London’s Sadler’s Wells. The show is currently on tour in Europe, visiting France, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain.

A satire about greed, deception, and how power corrupts, Revisor is set to a script voiced by Canadian actors and penned by Kidd Pivot choreographer Pite’s collaborator, theatre artist Young. It’s based on Russian Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 play The Government Inspector.

It was up against Rambert Company and Dance Umbrella for the prize.

Pite and Young had previously been awarded an Olivier for the previous production Betroffenheit in 2017.

Amid the other prizes were Life of Pi at Wyndham’s theatre as best new play, while Back to the Future: The Musical at Adelphi theatre won best new musical.

The ceremony at London's Royal Albert Hall Saturday was the first Olivier ceremony held live since 2020.

Featured

Janet Smith

Janet Smith is founding partner and editorial director of Stir. She is an award-winning arts journalist who has spent more than two decades immersed in Vancouver’s dance, screen, design, theatre, music, opera, and gallery scenes. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle.

Articles

In The Brutal Joy, Justine A. Chambers channels the overwhelming beauty of Black living

With staging that evokes a Chicago jazz bar, the Dance Centre and PuSh Festival co-presentation draws on matrilineal fashion and line dancing

Ballet BC highlights masterful choreographers Crystal Pite and Jiří Kylián with INFINITY, February 26 to 28

Program features Pite’s Frontier, a deep dive into the unknown, and Kylián’s 27’52”, an exploration of theoretical elements

Dance review: JEZEBEL challenges the stereotype of the booty-poppin’ backup dancer

In a riveting PuSh Festival and New Works copresentation, Belgium’s Cherish Menzo plays with repetition, chopped-and-screwed music, and flashing dental grillz

Review: Liquid limbs and mesmerizing visual magic at Recirquel’s Paradisum

In DanceHouse and The Cultch co-presentation, the Hungarian company is full of flowing bodies and rippling fabric

At PuSh, Alan Lake Factori(e)’s mythologically driven Orpheus paints a visceral picture of loss

In the deeply moving production, dancers embody the ancient tale of death and longing by tapping into their own experiences of tragedy

Stir Cheat Sheet: 5 shows to startle and spellbind at PuSh International Performing Arts Festival

Productions that “push” forms include dance works that play with props and stereotypes, as well as ethereal odes to nature and the northern lights

Recirquel’s postapocalyptic Paradisum conjures visual worlds out of fabric and light

Producer Natália Fábics says the Hungarian work, co-presented by DanceHouse and The Cultch, is as much a contemporary artwork and philosophical epic as a fusion of circus and dance