Creative Illusionists PILOBOLUS Comes to UConn's Jorgensen Stage 11/01

Pilobolus is a sun-loving fungus and also a fun-loving dance company, in its 41st year of evolution. It brings natural and organic, highly evolved style to a varied program on Jorgensen's stage on Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012, at 7:30 p.m. And its life forms will even respond to audience questions after the performance.

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts is located at 2132 Hillside Road on the UConn campus in Storrs. Tickets are $36, $33 and $31, with some discounts available. For tickets and information, call the Box Office 10 a.m.–5 p.m., Mon–Fri at 860.486.4226, or go to jorgensen.uconn.edu. Free  parking is available across the street in the North Garage.

The program will intersperse new and classic dance and video selections from Pilobolus Dance Theatre's vast repertoire. Scheduled pieces are Rushes (2007), All Is Not Lost (2011), Gnomen (1997), Duet (1992) and Day Two (1980). Films include Pilobolus Is a Fungus, Traffic, Starlings and Explosions. Note: may contain nudity.

Pilobolus, based in Washington Depot and well known to Connecticut as well as world audiences, has kept to its collaborative roots and its remarkable weight-sharing approach to choreography that stuns its longtime fans and spawns new audience growth wherever it travels. Its collective includes three directors – Robby Barnett, Michael Tracy and Itamar Kubovy – and more than two-dozen dancers.

The Pilobolus repertoire has been used by the Joffrey, Feld, Ohio, Arizona and Aspen/Santa Fe Ballets, and numerous companies abroad. Pilobolus has collaborated with innovators it admires – writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak, Israeli choreographers Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak, the MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory, Pulitzer Prize-winning comic artist Art Spiegelman, the Grammy-winning American composer and musician Dan Zanes, the Grammy-winning band OK Go, puppeteer Basil Twist and the head writer for SpongeBob SquarePants, Stephen Banks. The award-winning troupe was featured in 2004 on CBS 60 Minutes.

The company has produced more than 100 innovative choreographic works. It also leverages its trademark free-flowing creativity and improvisation through its Pilobolus Institute for adults and children, artists and business people, all interested in its trademark model of creative thinking. Through its third arm, Pilobolus Creative Services, it has contributed works designed for TV spots for Mobil, Ford, Toyota, Opel and Hyundai; live events for IBM, McKinsey, United Technologies, Dupont and Merck; and gala performances for Joe Boxer, Marite Girbaud and MAC Cosmetics. The company has created works for the Academy Awards, Oprah Winfrey Show and the NFL Network.

Jorgensen was named Best College/University Performing Arts Center in the Hartford Advocate Best of Hartford Readers' Poll for 2012 and the "Best Cabaret" designation in Connecticut Magazine's "Best of Connecticut" 2011 and 2012 issues.