Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young, Assembly Hall review: Dancing into... a meeting room?

Setting up the meeting room, checking the agenda, dealing with the body left on the floor: Assembly Hall swoops from mundane to mythic and back again. Starting with a medieval re-enactment society’s annual general meeting, it becomes its own kind of quest. It’s very funny, and surprisingly tender.

Assembly Hall is the latest collaboration between choreographer Crystal Pite and writer Jonathon Young, following the devastating Betroffenheit and the unsettling Revisor. Created for Pite’s own company Kidd Pivot, it’s a distinctive strand of dance theatre, sitting alongside the ballets Pite has made for companies around the world. 

Young’s text is spoken on the soundtrack, amplified by the dancers’ body language. The eight characters come together for what may be their group’s final meeting: costs are rising, attendance is falling, they’ve only got the hall until six. Jay Gower Taylor’s set is a well-worn venue, with battered chairs, glowing exit signs, and a basketball hoop hanging over a raised stage.

Getting started is a marvel of social observation: bickering over the chairs, passive-aggressive reminders about refreshments, arguments brewing as they insist on correct procedure. But there’s the moment where they acknowledge the empty chair (“the Absent One”), in an oddly powerful little ritual. Trying to get the minutes approved becomes a struggle with remembered weeds, dancer Rakeem Hardy tipping to the earth as the paperwork gets out of control.

Pite and Young can turn on a sixpence, flipping between sharp-eyed comedy and epic scale in a moment. When the agenda turns into a battlefield, it’s genuinely exciting: an action movie soundtrack booming as the dancers throw themselves into the fight. As they’re pulled deeper into their imaginary world, snatches of the AGM linger; a doomed brotherhood unpack their woes over the Victoria sponge.

And for all their pettiness, we see why these people are so committed to this group. Gregory Lau’s hapless Dave goes from bitter resentment at feeling left out to eager enthusiasm for his quest. “I really need this in my life right now,” he admits to Renée Sigouin’s sorrowing maiden – although, the third or fourth time he encounters her, he wonders “Aren’t you a tad sick of all this?” Can’t they escape the pattern?

The pacing of the second half is less sure, though Pite sends her dancers through gorgeous solos and rippling groups that build and break like waves. But she and Young evoke fears and ideals that refuse to be undercut: their fantasy imagery steps into the everyday world, ambiguous but undeniable.

Until 23 March, sadlerswells.com; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, from 22 to 24 August; eif.co.uk/events/assembly-hall