Pilobolus a hit with the crowd
By Susan Broili : The Herald-Sun
Jun 23, 2006 : 8:33 pm ET
DURHAM – Pilobolus proved a crowd-pleaser with two new dances and three old gems at the American Dance Festival on Thursday.
The limber-limbed, imaginative troupe, known for its strange linkages, drew applause even before the curtain came up in Page Auditorium.
These dancers make the gems shine: the 1997 masterpiece “Gnomen”; the 1980 slapstick “Solo from the Empty Suitor”; and “Day Two”, which brings down the house with its usual watery bows.
The two ADF premieres, “Prism” and “Memento Mori”, created earlier this year, show Pilobolus both can draw from its legacy and build on it.
In “Prism,” dancers shoot through space, roll forward and backward on their heads, and crack the whip with one dancer at the end of the line “flying” above the stage (an image from vintage Pilobolus).
In this dance, choreographed by Michael Tracy in collaboration with the dancers, they also come up with some new body-bending configurations as if to prove that they continue to only think outside the box but light-years away from it.
In one image, three dancers intertwine their bodies to form a cube on which another dancer sits. In another, dancers form a tight circle, facing each other and simultaneously twist their bodies so that each head rests on another's thigh.
Most of the movements have a light, silken, effortless quality with partnering both beautiful and innovative. But since Pilobolus has a penchant for conflict between the sexes, the dance ends with such a section.
First, three men prey upon a woman, but she turns the tables and scatters them to the floor as she crouches in fighter's stance.
In “Memento Mori,” Andrew Herro and Renee Jaworski offer a sensitive, touching portrayal of nothing less than a couple's life together. It represents the best, original dance theater Pilobolus has done to date.
Wearing heavy coats and winter hats, the couple enters bent over, arm-in-arm, and find, to their amazement, their youth.
As though traveling back in time, they find themselves at a small table and chairs where they become children, who tease each other. She takes his hat and flattens it in her chair by using her body like a jackhammer. The tickling soon turns to courtship as they grow older and he uses an imaginary string to move down around her body as she shimmies in a red party dress.
In another section, he takes one of her legs, bent behind her, and turns it as though winding up an old phonograph as a scratchy-sounding, vintage opera recording plays.
Gestures, such as trying to choke each other, indicate their relationship has its rough spots. Or maybe that operatic music is to blame for the heightened drama.
When the music stops, they take their bows. There's a sense that they are in their prime, in the spotlight of their lives. Then, in an instant, their youth is over, the dream/memory gone as they help each other into their old coats and bent-over, arm-in- arm, they make their exit.