Author: Philip Gardner

~ Author: Oberon

Tuesday July 23rd, 2024 – It’s been a while since I last saw Pilobolus, and it was truly revelatory reconnecting with this unique, legendary dance company tonight at The Joyce. The season celebrates re:CREATION, a brilliant collection of works – old and new – from Pilobolus’s 50-year history which were offered on two specially-devised programs.

Tonight’s program, entitled Dreams, featured five works; and while at times things seemed too same-y and certain passages went on too long, the cumulative force of the evening was incredibly powerful and meaningful on a personal level. Six dancers carried the entire evening, their awesome athleticism and boundless energy meshed with an innate sense of poetry and unstinting commitment to the work. 

The program opened with Thresh|Hold, from Latinx choreographer and designer Javier De Frutos; several other names are listed in the program as collaborators. To shimmering music, the curtain rises on a closed door, which will become the epicenter of the piece. A rather haggard woman (the program tells us it’s either Marlon Feliz or Hannah Klinkman – not very helpful to someone attempting to write a review) opens the door and sits on the stoop; a male body is then thrown out onto the ground, and all hell breaks loose. The four men in the cast might be gestapo or just random trouble-makers. People chase each other about, torment the woman (or one another), whilst the door itself is the main character – spun about the stage, opened and closed at high speeds, allowing light to shine thru from varying angles. All this was handled with pinpoint timing by the dancers,

As the piece unfolds, we hear a fractured recording of the Casta Diva from Bellini’s NORMA, merged with other noises, sometimes harsh or otherworldly. After the pitch of the aria sags and becomes incoherent, the melody resumes – now voiced by the inimitable Maria Callas, whose version has been used in numerous danceworks over the years…if you’ve never heard it, here it is.

The dancework, nightmarish and somewhat incoherent, was engrossing to watch; the use of the door was truly clever and impressive. The woman (I believe it was Ms. Feliz) seems desperate to escape but is always thwarted, sometimes in mid-air. A men’s quartet near the end, with lifts, was oddly lyrical. The audience seemed captivated, and applauded heartily, but there were no bows.

The New York City premiere of the duet Bloodlines followed; an epic love duet that packs a heart-rending wallop. Choreographed by the co-directors of Pilobolus, Renée Jaworski and Matt Kent, in collaboration with Ms. Feliz and Ms. Klinkman, who danced it together. The luminous ‘music-of-the-spheres’ score is attributed to five composers: Andre Heller, Michael Gordon, Elisapie Isaac, Eva Reiter, and Meredith Monk.

Gorgeously lit by Diane Ferry Williams, Bloodlines was hypnotically danced as red rose petals fell from the sky. The two women, lovers, seem to retell the story of their love; they strike poses and move to jagged rhythms until a partnership is formed.

To the sentimental sound of an old 78 recording for violin and piano, they become increasingly intimate, one dancer cradling the other. But something is amiss; thru age or illness, one of the women expires, leaving her beloved bereft. The two dancers brought so much beauty and poetry to this duet, making the end unbearably poignant.

Still recovering from the emotional pull of Bloodlines, the deeply moving male quartet Gnomen sustained my intense involvement in what we were seeing and hearing. A tolling bell signals the opening of Gnomen, wherein we encounter a brotherhood of gnomes: ageless, deformed dwarves out of folklore who live in the earth.

The four – Connor Chaparro, Quincy Ellis, Sean Langford, and Derion Loman – wear black briefs; they move hesitantly, seemingly in pain, with their bodies disfigured. They seem to be downtrodden victims of fate. Helping one another, their entwined figures struggle to walk. They appear to pray, and now the chime sounds louder: they move spastically, like contorted acrobats.

The choreography is extremely athletic, strenuous, and demanding, and the dancers took it all in stride. Clockwork music and a dreamy harp are heard as the quartet attempt entwined tumbling. The sounds of the marimba transform to a melodious finish, with a sense of healing for the hapless creatures as the chimes sounds again. The seemingly healed gnomes kneel in prayer.

After a longish intermission, Symbiosis – choreographed by Michael Tracy in collaboration with Renée Jaworski and Otis Cook – opens with thunder and lightning. To the music – a collage of pieces by Thomas Oboe Lee, George Crumb, Arvo Pärt, and Jack Body, played by the Kronos Quartet – dancers Marlon Fritz and Quincy Ellis, nearly nude, perform a sensuous duet. The elasticity and grace of their bodies develop an intimacy underscored by Mr. Pärt’s languid,  beguiling Spiegel im spiegel wherein the dancers tenderly see-saw in an embrace. The dancers’ athleticism takes on a poetic aspect as we surrender to the tender beauty of their entwined bodies. 

Closing the program was Rushes, Pilobolus’s first collaboration with Israeli choreographers Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak, and while it was overly-long and rather less engaging than the other works, there was an undercurrent which kept me focused.

Circus music heralds the rise of the curtain, and we find five dancers – Mlles. Feliz and Klinkman and Mssrs. Chaparro, Ellis, and Langford – seated in wooden chairs in a circle of light. They seem to be waiting for something – a flight, perhaps? To the sound of rushing water, playful renderings of “Mary had a little lamb” and “Oh, they don’t wear pants on the sunny side of France” are fleetingly heard.

Whimsical partnering, endless bouts of musical chairs, comic vignettes, and walkabouts come into play, but we don’t understand who these people are and what they are hanging about for. One character, played by Quincy Ellis, is an endearing elderly man with a suitcase full of dreams. In the end, the chairs are set in a row and the old man walks along them as the other dancers hastily move the seats so that his path remains endless. At the end. we again hear Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im spiegel – all of it – which seemed to drag out the end of an otherwise engaging evening.

~ Oberon