Tom's Life Bits

We went to the DPAC in Durham on Friday night, July 1. Our first trip to the DPAC. Pilobolus did not disappoint. They displayed their amazing physicality, sculpted bodies and the new as well as the old. It started with “Untitled” a dance where ladies in long skirts dance on the shoulders of nude men. They waltz, sashay and move around the stage before the nude men pop out. Two other men appear in suits and spar and fight before they joining the nude men under the ladies dresses, forming a trio. The second piece was a delight, “Seraph”. A blue “hovercraft” appeared. The dancer danced around the craft. Then a red one appeared and started to chase the dancer. Great dancing with all his movements rolling, tumbling and flying off stage to escape the craft. The third piece was “Korokoro”, a Japanese Bhuto inspired piece where the dancers were powdered in white and rolled and tumbled together. They also climbed up out of a standing mass of dancers and slid head first on their backs down the front. Amazing. The next piece was techno wizardry with a camera table and video screen. Dancers in body suits made shapes on a camera table which came out as kaleidoscopic effects on video projected on a screen. It was short and very loud. Amazing but I'm glad it was short. The last number is my all time favorite, “Day Two”. It involves the 4 men as neanderthal cave men, then the woman come in topless and form shapes, amoebas and life forms with the men. Libbie's favorite is the dancers popping out of a tarp as plants. The background music included thunder and rain. The curtain call is the water filled tarp serving as a water slide. The dancers slide across stage on the film of water. Once again, I enjoyed the two topless Pilobolus women, this time standing in full light taking their bow with the company.

By SUSAN BROILI The Herald Sun

DURHAM – As Pilobolus, that body-bending troupe named after a fun-loving fungus, makes its 38th American Dance Festival appearance, audiences can see the results of some unusual collaborations in three world premieres.

There's “Seraph,” a dance for one human and two robotic helicopters – a collaboration with engineers, programmers and pilots of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In “All Is Not Lost,” the troupe performs a live version of their video performance for the rock band, OK GO. But perhaps the most unusual brings Japanese butoh (Dance of Darkness) and the often light-spirited American modern dance troupe together for the creation of the ADF-commissioned “Korokoro.”

When ADF director Charles Reinhart suggested the collaboration between Pilobolus and Dairakudakan master dancer and choreographer Takuya Muramatsu, Pilobolus welcomed the opportunity, said Michael Tracy, one of the troupe's artistic directors, in a telephone interview earlier this week from Washington, Conn., where the troupe is based.

“Takuya is a master choreographer. He likes Pilobolus and appreciates how difficult it is to do,” Tracy said.

Muramatsu joined Dairakudakan, one of Japan's leading butoh troupes, in 1994 and has presented his own work as well as performed with this troupe at the American Dance Festival in 2003 and 2008. The festival first featured Dairakudakan in 1982, and few who saw that performance of “Sea-Dappled Horse,” will forget the naked, white-painted bodies, shaven heads, eyes rolled back in the head (to look inward) and tortured movements.

Some believe butoh emerged in 1950s Japan as a response to the horrors of World War II. The new dance style certainly rejected the lyrical, role-based traditional dance as well as most Western styles.

The feeling about this collaboration was mutual.

“Pilobolus is so unique and the dancers are so skilled,” Muramatsu said in comments translated by two Pilobolus, Japanese-American dancers and posted on the troupe's website. “They make the impossible look possible. I am interested in making the possible look impossible,” Muramatsu said. It is a constant search for beauty in, as he puts it, the “complexity of simple things.”

“His tradition is a much more expressive one … They are willing to express emotions beyond the social norm,” Tracy said.

“Pilobolus dancers knew they were stepping into new territory,” Tracy added.

During their two-month collaboration, Muramatsu gave workshops for dancers in which he stressed working on the details of each moment including how to embody two conflicting emotions at the same time without using facial expressions, Tracy added.

“Each dancer needs to give birth to the movement as if it is spontaneous and immediate,” Muramatsu said in an interview with Japan Times.

“I think the dancers were transformed,” Tracy said. And, he believes dancers will be able to use what they've learned in other performances.

The resulting dance is unlike anything Pilobolus has done before, Tracy said. The new dance melds both styles. “It looks both physically Pilobolus and visibly butoh,” Tracy added.

Although different, Pilobolus and Muramatsu have some things in common.

“… We make heroic attempts to top ourselves and he has a brave way of exposing the soul,” Tracy said. They also share a sense of humor. “He definitely has a sense of humor about the way he looks at life and people and that resonates with Pilobolus' sense of humor, Tracy added.

That sense of humor cropped up when Tracy explained the title of the new dance. “Korokoro” means “rolling” in Japanese. The dance opens with some rolling. And “it [the word] rolls off the tongue like Pilobolus,” Tracy said.

BY ROY C. DICKS - Correspondent

DURHAM In its 40th year, Pilobolus continues to amaze and amuse. This weekend's American Dance Festival program again proves how the company turns the most sophisticated audiences into wide-eyed kids.

New technologies are adding dimension to the company's gymnastics-based works. For “All Is Not Lost,” the first of three premieres, collaborators OK Go and Trish Sie (creator of the band's popular YouTube videos) project live video images onto a screen. A camera underneath a huge glasslike table allows kaleidoscopic views as the dancers slide and roll across it. Actions shift from swimming to space walking, creating caterpillarlike creatures as they go. At just six minutes, the piece evokes more wonder and delight than many companies' full evenings.

The slightly longer “Seraph” employs talents from MIT's Distributed Robotics Laboratory, which supply UFO-like objects that fly silently around dancer Matt Del Rosario as they blink various colors. The effect inspires joyful gasps as dancer and machines interact, but the idea needs more development to move beyond the gimmick level.

“Korokoro” is a 25-minute work in collaboration with Japanese Butoh choreographer Takuya Muramatsu. Six dancers begin as weak, trembling forms making repeated efforts to stand upright and connect with one another. The atmosphere is primal, the actions evolutionary. The dancers astound in their balance, strength and flexibility, combining into different forms and emerging as new two-person creatures after an apocalyptic event. The piece conjures mesmerizing alien worlds, but several sections go on longer than the concept can sustain.

Two pieces from the company's first decade confirm its permanent place in dance history. “Untitled” begins as a bucolic outing by two women in long dresses whose sudden doubling in height comes from male dancers beneath. What seems lightly comic soon turns Freudian as these hidden men are released from underneath, their nude bodies in stark contrast to the women's nattily dressed gentlemen suitors. The psychological layers still fascinate.

“Day Two” is Moses Pendleton's vision of the dawn of creation, where humans enact fierce rituals and primitive creatures skittle about. The dancers' glistening bodies astonish in their athletic sensuality as they form unbelievable structures. The curtain call, in which dancers slide across a water-slicked stage, puts the cap on a must-see event.