Spanning the Pilobolus Spectrum

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The New York Sun

Sometimes you want to ask a Pilobolus piece, “Just exactly where are you going with this?” The characteristically improvisatory pace of the company’s work can make too many episodic byways en route to saying something. But the dancers have complete confidence in the direction they’re taking, and the improvisatory pace is a reflection of actual improvisations, since Pilobolus creates collaboratively.

On Tuesday at the Joyce, where it returned this week for its annual four-week season, the company performed Michael Tracy’s new “Lanterna Magica.” Mother and pixie-ish daughter are out at night amidst the fireflies and the lightning bugs, when they come across a spiritually potent lantern, which seems to confer powers on whomever possesses it. As the two women are joined by four men in a series of nocturnal adventures, the lantern seems to have concentrated or to be correlated to the moon’s proverbial influence over human affairs.

The new piece was followed by Jonathan Wolken’s “Pseudopodia,” one of the company’s earliest works. Here, percussion on the sound track heralds a tribute to unicellular locomotion. In a red unitard, Jun Kuribayashi moves like a streak of light — a meteor, a phosphene — as he pilots himself on his haunches. He pauses and gathers in his energy before going spinning and somersaulting across the stage floor again. Occasionally, he’s almost completely vertical on his feet; sometimes his legs are extended upright into the air from a squat position. There’s suspense and even a certain poignancy to his attempts to achieve biped stability, before he rolls off in silence.

“Memento Mori,” which followed, was made by Mr. Wolken just a few years ago. Andrew Herro and Annika Sheaff shuffle on, old folks at home in baggy overcoats. They try on hats that seem to have a talismanic potency — as in “Lanterna,” Pilobolus demonstrates its belief in the magical properties of props. Instantly they’re young and foolish again, playing tug-of-war with the table at which they’re sitting, and giddyap with the chairs.

Pilobolus has its own lexicon of lifts that are indebted to ballet, modern dance, and acrobatic holds, but are ultimately unlike all three, and usually involve reciprocal support between the sexes. Here, Mr. Herro runs with Ms. Sheaff standing on his shoulders. She leads him by chin in a circle. She starts to undress him, and then he bourrées out of his underpants; the sex roles continue to be exchanged as she seems to support him in a new identity as floating sylph, while she flexes her biceps. Things get wild — he pulls down his underpants and moons us. But suddenly modesty returns — she’s abashed. He tells her to turn around while he puts his clothes on again. Finally, they slip back into their overcoats and hobble off together. The soundtrack is a crazy-quilt compilation.

The second half of Tuesday’s program made a pendant-like arrangement of Pilobolus new and old, with 1972’s “Ocellus,” choreographed by Pilobolus’s founding members, followed by Mr. Wolken’s “Megawatt,” from 2004. The two pieces couldn’t be more different. In “Ocellus,” Messrs. Herro and Kuribayashi are joined by Jeffrey Huang and Manelich Minniefee. What sounds like frog song accompanies them as they work in pairs or four-way concerted stretches to fashion intricate body sculpture. They slide through tunnels and crawl spaces formed by the apertures between them. They wind up as two pairs stacked together, one man standing on his feet, one on his hands.

“Megawatt,” by contrast, is a full company group twitch to alternate rock; call it neo-heavy metal. There’s the full complement of Pilobolian partnering and a lot of psueodopodian propulsion across the floor, but here it’s grotesquely wired, almost electrocuted, to the point where the dancers seem like mutants. It’s a long way from the frogs, the crickets, and the idyllic body hammocks of “Ocellus.” I’m partial to the flora and fauna of Pilobolus’s earliest aesthetic, but “Megawatt” is undeniably a virtuoso workout.


The New York Sun

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