New Tricks is an intimate solo work created and performed by Christopher House. It uses costume, disguise, ritual and 44 years of choreographic research to explore new ways of being in the world in a veteran body. The work is personal and playful and is inspired by a desire to embody liveness, the ambiguity of gesture, the poetry of failure and inefficiency, the beauty of the ordinary, and a queering of both the body and the imagination. The work exists in relation to the space in which it is performed, unfolding through a series of episodes that invite the viewer to consider the specificity of each passing moment. Sound is run onstage by the performer.
Created in residencies at Centre Q2, Citadel + Cie and the Banff Centre, New Tricks premiered at the Ross Centre for Dance in Toronto on March 24, 2022 and was subsequently performed at the Festival of New Dance in St. John’s, NL. The soundtrack by Thom Gill is a series of covers of familiar tunes and of original music composed for the work. Gender-bending costumes are by Sarah Doucet and lighting is by Simon Rossiter. New Tricks was created with dramaturgical support from Tedd Robinson and Rosemary James with contributions from Ame Henderson and Jordan Tannahill.
Duration: 55 minutes
Location: Annex, 823 Seymour St, Vancouver, BC V6B 3L4
TICKETS
Thursday: $25 Adult and $20 Student/Senior/Arts Worker
Friday & Saturday: $35 Adult and $30 Student/Senior/Arts Worker
Annex Package: Watch one show by Christopher House & one show by Taketeru Kudo on a Friday or Saturday night for $50.
Choreography and performance: Christopher House
Soundtrack: Thom Gill
Lighting: Simon Rossiter
Costumes: Sarah Doucet
Outside Eyes: Tedd Robinson and Rosemary James
Technical director/Stage Manager: tba
Born and raised in St. John’s, NL, Christopher House is a Canadian choreographer, performer, director, educator, and mentor. He has collaborated with many leading companies and artists including The National Ballet of Canada, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Ballet BC, Cirque du Soleil, Kimsooja, Jordan Tannahill, Ame Henderson, The Hidden Cameras, Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland, and post-modern icon Deborah Hay. Since 2017, he has enjoyed spending more time teaching, choreographing, and performing in Newfoundland.
Christopher House’s works have been performed in nineteen countries worldwide. In 2018, his retrospective program House Mix toured fifteen cities in Canada and two in Colombia. He was a resident choreographer and a leading dancer with Toronto Dance Theatre from 1979-2020, the last twenty-six years as Artistic Director. He created over sixty works for TDT, diversified the company’s repertoire, and developed several programs in education, audience cultivation, and mentorship for young choreographers.
He has taught for many arts organizations, most recently Sick and Twisted Theatre (Winnipeg), The Banff Centre, and the School of TDT. As a performer, he appears in his own works and has danced in those of Sarah Chase, Peter Chin, David Earle, Ame Henderson, James Kudelka and Mark Morris among others. As a guest with Les Grand Ballets Canadiens, he performed the title role in Fokine’s Petrushka and presented his solo Schubert Dances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His solo performance practice has been influenced by his collaborations with choreographer Deborah Hay since 2006. His performance of Hay’s I’ll Crane for You was listed as one of the top five performances of 2016 in the Globe and Mail. Marienbad, his duet with Jordan Tannahill, was named as one of the best works of the decade in NOW and was featured in an episode of CBC-TV’s In the Making in 2019.
A longtime Associate Dance Artist of Canada’s National Arts Centre, Christopher House has received many awards and honours for his work including three Dora Mavor Moore Awards, the Silver Ticket Award, the Muriel Sharon Award and an honorary doctorate from Memorial University of NL. He has been a Member of the Order of Canada since 2017.
The performance includes brief periods of nudity.