by Stephanie Beauchamp There is a bottom where you thought there was a top. An arm is where a leg is
supposed to be. One body is really two. What you thought was black and white is
really the color wheel of Pilobolus Dance Theatre. For almost 25 years, this
uniquely physical and acrobatic company (named for an intelligent,
light-sensitive, single-celled phototropic fungus that flourishes in New
England barnyards) has remained perched on the edge of modern dance, pleasing
and exciting audiences and remaining one step ahead of the game. The long success and popularity of Pilobolus is due to their trademark
illusionistic use of the body, which is worked like a paintbrush to create
strange abstract strokes and shapes and things not remotely human against a
canvas that resembles some hot, gaseous planet that Captain Jean-Luc might
investigate. The beauty of Pilobolus’ pieces is that, whatever they’re about,
you are guaranteed to see not only that in them, but lots of other things as
well. Dancers’ bodies transform, most convincingly, from the human shape into
everything, anything: a blob, a bird, Superman. No telling.
What Pilobolus does has been termed everything from pop dance to theatre to
mime to sculpture. It’s hard to pin down because there is no other dance
company that really does what they do (except maybe MOMIX, but it developed out
of Pilobolus). Like its fungal namesake, Pilobolus is a species unto itself.
The Los Angeles Times may have put it best when it noted, “Piloboli
create their own gravity, establish their own vocabulary of abstraction.
Complicated geometric patterns sprout and grow organically. Wondrous shapes
emerge, merge, split, and remerge.” To say Pilobolus is a visual and
intellectual feast is somewhat of a clich�: It is something for the mind
to see and the eye to eat.
“It’s a strange creature, Pilobolus,” says Jonathan Wolken, one of the
troupe’s four artistic directors. “I think we’ve always defied definition. It’s
motion that speaks to you and it’s often very powerful. It can be tremendously
pleasing or downright upsetting.”
Wolken describes the troupe’s process of sculpting dances as a pendulum that
swings back and forth between pieces with a “thinly veiled story” and those
that are more emotional and serious in nature. Both ends of this spectrum will
be represented in the five pieces in their performance this week at the UT
Performing Arts Center. Because he prefers the audience to come to the
performance “with a sense of momentous performance excitement,” Wolken reveals
little about the work in the program. He only notes that the male quartet,
Particle Zoo, is a “wildly physical piece” and Duet, choreographed for two women, is on the emotional end of the pendulum.
Quatrejeux, another quartet, is referred to as fun, and, intriguingly,
as “the froth on the cappuccino.” The male duet Pyramid of the Moon contains a “thinly veiled story,” and Sweet Purgatory is the program’s
most emotionally developed and serious piece, created to Dimitri Shostakovich’s
“Chamber Symphony, Opus 110a.”
When asked about the origins of Pilobolus’ dances, Wolken replies, “You go
with what goes. You move with what moves you. You respond to what stimulates
you, and that’s always been Pilobolus’ way….
“I think we do respond to visual, graphic impact. We start with visual
stimuli. We want people to sit up and watch this stuff. We want people to be
stimulated, moved. Our job is to create something that is evocative: an image
that is powerful. Very few of our dances are abstract, kinetic movement, where
the shapes only are being represented. I think what moves us now are things
that are generally evocative, where the emotion is overlaid by a thick larding
of nuance and theatre. And somehow these together make a rich, nourishing soup;
some-thing that excites the eye and makes you want to look at it. Something to
chew on.”
Pilobolus was born in 1971 at Dartmouth College, finding quick success opening
for Frank Zappa at a Smith College concert, then on the PBS television series
Dance in America. At the birth of the company, its members soon
discovered that no one knew how to do anything, so they developed a natural
collaborative system among themselves for not only the creation of the dances
but the other commonplace essentials of the company such as booking, touring,
and paying bills. “All that learning evolved and enriched itself and grew and
became more mature, but never went away,” says Wolken. “The present
collaboration of the company is an outgrowth of that early mold. I still do a
lot of the things I used to do. The original artistic directors have changed
slightly over the years, but we maintain our stewardship.
“Our dancers have taken over some of the mantles that we used to. We rely on
them – as all choreographers rely on their dancers – for intellect and wit, and
what I call movement intelligence. We expect them to be excellent dancers and
intelligent people, and the way we credit that is as our collaborators. But it
is [the artistic directors’] job to craft and shape, and in every sense of the
word choreograph, and to sculpt the work on stage.”
Despite a quarter century of bizarre, fan-tastical shaping of dancing fungi,
Wolken insists, “We are very much regular people. We are eclectic in every
sense of the word. We’re all over the map. We are interested (maybe
interesting) people, variously intellectual, and wildly interested in all kinds
of subjects. It’s not a narrow approach. I’m interested in life. I’m interested
in the pursuit of happiness.
“Pilobolus is a creature of a different kind. Pilobolus grew out of our
interests. And, in all modesty, in the end, finally, we do what we do. We do
the best we can. We do our best to make beautiful, intriguing dances.”n
Pilobolus Dance Theatre performs Sep 23, Sat, 8pm, at the Bass Concert Hall
on the UT campus.
This article appears in September 22 • 1995 and September 22 • 1995 (Cover).