International Dance Day Message 2026 by Crystal Pite (Canada)

Humans move – our arms reach out, our knees col­lapse, our heads nod, our chests cave in, our backs arch, we jump, we shrug, we clench our fists, we pick each oth­er up and push each oth­er away. This is lan­guage as much as it is action. This is what the body has to say about need, defeat, courage, despair, desire, joy, ambiva­lence, frus­tra­tion, love. These images flash with mean­ing in the mind because we have felt these things so pure­ly in the body – we have been moved.

We are dancers, all of us. Life moves us; life dances us. Ephemer­al as breath, con­crete as bone, a dance is made of us. We sculpt space. We write with our bod­ies in a word­less lan­guage that is deeply under­stood. We grace the space with­in and around us when we dance.

Like life, a dance cre­ates and destroys itself in every moment. Like love, it is beyond rea­son.

I like to think of the body as a loca­tion; a place where being is held and shaped. When we dance, we are pro­found­ly engaged in being there.

I’m writ­ing this in ear­ly 2026, when there seems to be no end to the oppres­sion, upheaval and suf­fer­ing in our world. Dai­ly, as we wit­ness the hor­ror of what humans are capa­ble of doing to each oth­er and the machin­ery of pow­er that funds and fuels unspeak­able vio­lence to peo­ple and plan­et, dance feels like a facile, use­less response. It’s hard to imag­ine what a dance artist can do in a world that so bad­ly needs rad­i­cal change and heal­ing.

And yet – art, like hope, is a form of love. Defi­ant­ly gen­er­a­tive in the face of des­e­cra­tion, art is a sol­vent for the cal­ci­fy­ing mind and a balm to heal it. Art is a ves­sel to hold us while we grap­ple with ques­tions – togeth­er – in a way that is dif­fer­ent from news, dif­fer­ent from doc­u­men­tary and edu­ca­tion, dif­fer­ent from opin­ion and social media, dif­fer­ent from activism and protest, but not incom­pat­i­ble.

Through cre­ativ­i­ty, we accu­mu­late resis­tance and hope through small acts of courage, curios­i­ty, kind­ness and col­lab­o­ra­tion. In dance, and in dance-mak­ing, we find proof that human­i­ty is more than our lat­est heart­break­ing glob­al fail­ure.

But dance needs no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, no expla­na­tion. It’s made of us yet owes us noth­ing. It only needs to inhab­it a will­ing body. From that loca­tion, it can trans­late the inef­fa­ble; act­ing as an inter­me­di­ary between us and the unknown.

We are moved by these van­ish­ing traces of beau­ty in the present moment. And as we embody both the dance and its dis­ap­pear­ance, we are remind­ed of our imper­ma­nence. At the same time, if we are pay­ing atten­tion, dance will give us an occa­sion­al glimpse of the soul.

—

Crys­tal PITE, Cana­da

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er

 

Cana­di­an chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Crys­tal Pite is a for­mer com­pa­ny mem­ber of Bal­let British Colum­bia and William Forsythe’s Bal­lett Frank­furt.

In a chore­o­graph­ic career span­ning 35 years, Pite has cre­at­ed more than six­ty works for com­pa­nies such as The Roy­al Bal­let, Ned­er­lands Dans The­ater, The Paris Opera Bal­let, and The Nation­al Bal­let of Cana­da. She is known for works that coura­geous­ly address themes such as trau­ma, addic­tion, con­flict, con­scious­ness and mor­tal­i­ty; her bold and orig­i­nal vision has earned her inter­na­tion­al acclaim and inspired an entire gen­er­a­tion of dance artists.

She is an Asso­ciate Artist at three insti­tu­tions: Ned­er­lands Dans The­ater, Sadler’s Wells (Lon­don) and Canada’s Nation­al Arts Cen­tre. She has an hon­orary Doc­tor­ate of Fine Arts from Simon Fras­er Uni­ver­si­ty, is a Mem­ber of the Order of Cana­da and holds the hon­our of Offici­er de l’Ordre of Arts et des Let­tres from France.

In 2002, she formed Kidd Piv­ot in Van­cou­ver, a com­pa­ny that strives to dis­till and trans­late uni­ver­sal ques­tions into art­works that con­nect us to essen­tial parts of human­i­ty. World-renowned for rad­i­cal hybrids of dance and the­atre, Kidd Piv­ot tours inter­na­tion­al­ly with crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed works such as Betrof­fen­heit, Revi­sor, and Assem­bly Hall (co-cre­at­ed with Jonathon Young), The Tem­pest Repli­ca, Dark Mat­ters, Lost Action, and The You Show.

Pite’s many awards include the 2022 Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al of Canada’s Per­form­ing Arts Award, the 2011 Jacob’s Pil­low Dance Award and the Cana­da Council’s 2012 Jacque­line Lemieux Prize. In 2017, she received the Benois de la Danse for her cre­ation The Sea­sons’ Canon at the Paris Opera Bal­let. In 2018, she received the Grand Prix de la danse de Mon­tréal. She is the recip­i­ent of five Sir Lau­rence Olivi­er awards for cre­ations with Kidd Piv­ot and The Roy­al Bal­let.