Review: Pilobolus Restores Faith in Humanity

Leave it to Pilobolus to restore a bit of your faith in humanity. Beauty, diversity and teamwork are integral to their communal and genre-bending creative process, each piece daring and completely different from the next. Their run at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts opened on November 16th, 2016 and closes on December 4th.

Pilobolus has a connection to the audience that few other companies can boast. Dancers warm up on stage in plain sight as friends appear to give them hugs.

In Program A we're initiated into the space with a mini-movie featuring dancers of every hue opening their eyes and smiling at viewers while lying on each other covered in mud. The cheeky music hints at the playfulness for which Pilobolus is known.

The first piece, On the Nature of Things, revolves around the interactions of a topless trio, two men and one woman, counter-balancing on each other atop a cylinder. The stage is fairly dark except for the spotlights reflecting off their sculpted physiques, creating the look of classical Greek statues, black or white marble, coming to life after the museum has closed.

Their fluid physicality oscillates between curiosity and intimacy, danger and violence. They flirt with gliding off the cylinder, but never touch the floor, leaving the audience gasping audibly.

Eventually the woman separates herself as if recoiling, only to end up motionless on the floor. The dynamic between the two men grows increasingly competitive until her dreadlocked companion ends up motionless on the cylinder shortly after, seemingly slain under the foot of a fiery-haired conqueror.

The victor quickly wilts, however, possibly out of shame for what he's done or simply because he cannot survive without the other two. The social implications are open to interpretation.

Unexpectedly though, whether by ruse or rebirth, the dreadlocked character awakens and rises. The cylinder becomes a column for the ebony statue of a Titan, victorious, as the scene fades to black.

An inventive interlude of claymation gave the stage crew time to set up for All Is Not Lost, a timely display of optimism, ingenuity and fun, in which the colorful cast of characters dances on an apparatus that projects their bodies from the bottom up.

Essentially, we get to see two different angles of one dance, one from the floor up featuring a kaleidoscopic symmetry of bodies and one face on. The upbeat nature of the piece is contagious. It's ability to pique the fascination in audiences young or old is part of its unique appeal.

Another interlude of animation ensues, featuring Pilobolus' ambitious shadow puppet work, and leads us into the NYC premiere of Thresh | Hold.

Dusty, dim and ethereal Thresh | Hold feels like a cross between a repressed childhood dream and an adult-created nightmare.

In a place out of time, the aesthetic lies somewhere between a poverty or war-stricken era, early last century, and a post-apocalyptic future.

The main character is a glowing door, which dancers slide across the stage or fall, run, jump and crawl through.

Dancers freeze or rewind themselves in one moment only to break into a series of explosive leaps and rolls the next. Interjections of gossiping or fighting add to the feeling that the everyday woes of the subconscious are being enacted on the stage.

Of all the pieces in the program, Thresh | Hold is a crowning jewel of artistry and complexity.

Pilobolus embraces the spirit of the carnival naturally, and performers enlist some audience members to help build a prop for [esc], a riveting, Houdini-inspired piece.

Full of slapstick, pizzaz and danger, dancers escape boxes, duffle bags, chains, duct tape and plastic bags with methods that rely on everything from impressive strength, dexterity and strategy to total sleight-of-hand.

Another pretty distraction appears on a projection screen during the transition into the next piece, this time with what appears to be a school of jellyfish-like creatures forming shapes and changing colors.

What initially appeared to be a slightly underwhelming animation piece is revealed to be a much more exciting endeavor by Pilobolus, which I won't reveal here.

The final piece Rushes takes us back into a dreamscape, this time more bizarre and silly than chaotic and creepy.

The dancers use inventive body architecture to create odd creature-characters and pure abstraction. Women swat at imaginary pests or sit in imaginary seats, a man can't be separated from his briefcase even while covered with furniture, legs hold up a makeshift projection screen, dancers manually form an unending path of chairs for other dancers to walk on and later use chairs to form a carousel.

While probably my least favorite piece in the show, as always I can appreciate Pilobolus' dedication to innovation and experimentation and the unity, skill and trust required of its dancers. The works are exciting and inspiring to watch but, more importantly, they are transformative on an unconscious level, and that makes for good art.

Photo Credit: Jamie Moncrief

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