Pilobolus has been pushing bodies to their limits in unusual shapes and precarious balances since 1971, when the founders met at Dartmouth College. The company’s leadership has shifted and changed over the years, but what remains is the group’s collaborative approach. If there is a uniform mentality – all for one and one for all – it is partly due to the nature of the acrobatic, robust choreography. Strength is a must and so is confidence.
Despite the origin of the name, the group also has commercial appeal: Pilobolus is a genus of fungi that grows on herbivore fertilizer. Now under the direction of Renée Jaworski and Matt Kent – two former members of the company – after a pandemic delay, Pilobolus concludes its 50th anniversary tour with a three-week season at the Joyce Theatre. The title, the “Big Five-OH!”, has a lot in common with aspects of the group’s choreography, which can get painfully cute.
“Evening Song,” one of two New York premieres on Tuesday’s opening night schedule, is a dreamy journey in which six dancers share the stage with a pivotal piece of scenery: a long stretch of tie-dye fabric that changes over time . When a dancer held it under her shirt, she suddenly appeared pregnant; then the fabric was stretched like an umbilical cord before taking the shape of a rocking baby.
Created by Derion Loman, Madison Olandt, Jaworski and Kent in collaboration with six dancers, “Evening Song” is set to an ever-changing and at times bumpy sound score by Jad Abumrad – spare piano gives way to a kettle whistling and later to the song ” Stay Awake” from “Mary Poppins.” The work focuses on the powerful women of the company, Marlon Feliz and Hannah Klinkman.
Dressed in vibrant colors by Valerie St. Pierre Smith—yellow for Feliz and red for Klinkman—the women contrasted with the men dressed scantily (and tacky) in cloth that resembled armor. Held in the air, Feliz and Klinkman became angelic figures as they seemed to float in slow motion, giving the images a religious, painterly aspect. But “Evening Song” was more pictorial than evocative as it — like most of the works on the program — began to drag the dancers stomping the stage with repeated movement motifs that relied on their flexibility and highly tuned physicality to create sculptural tableaux.
The other New York premiere, “The Ballad,” created by Darlene Kascak, Jaworski and Kent in collaboration with seven dancers, is narrated by Kascak, a traditional Native American storyteller, alongside a soundscape by Ben Sollee. At the center is a young girl in a blue dress (Feliz); Kascak’s voiceover discusses the mistreatment and abuse of Indigenous children and her experience of being taken away from her activist mother and placed in foster care.
It has text mixed in about the legend of the Wendigo, a human turned cannibal. Once the monsters bite, their victims also turn into cannibals. If the Wendigo were a human whose selfishness “overpowered their self-control,” says Kascak, then today’s equivalents are corporations.
All the while, the choreography plays out the story, making the whole endeavour, however well-intentioned, more like a school play than a gripping piece of dance theater. Feliz falls into the world of the Wendigo – masked, crouching dancers who grab her feet as she tries to walk – and is passed over their colossal forms. Ultimately, the layered stories take on a hopeful tone as Kascak speaks of how it’s time for people to take steps back “to restore balance to the Earth.”
In “Branches,” Jaworski and Kent – in collaboration with others – also turn a lens to the natural world, but here the images are often too obvious and, again, cute. The dancers dip their toes and hands in a pool of invisible water, or vibrate to the sound of birdsong. It is full of starts and stops until, to the sound of flapping wings, they resolutely leave the stage.
The program opened with better-known glimpses of the Pilobolus universe: the vaudevillian solo from Michael Tracy’s “Empty Suitor,” performed by Nathaniel Buchsbaum, and “Megawatt,” an energetic six-person work reenacted in memory of Jonathan Wolken, its choreographer . who passed away in 2010, along with seven others.
Set to music by Primus, Radiohead and Squarepusher, “Megawatt” opened with dancers crawling across the stage on their backs, eventually curling up and rising on two feet to burst into the air like popcorn. Are they competent? No question. But facial expressions were also next level – and not in an entirely effective way. Sometimes, even in a dance called “Megawatt,” the power has to come from toning down.
Pilobolus
Through July 30 at the Joyce Theatre, Manhattan; joyce.org.
