Dance

...Wolken...

...The company took its name from the title of its first work...

...The good parts were very good indeed...

...None of the older company members now dances with the present group...

...Fluid muscular movement more akin to plastique posing than cadenced dancing, however, remains the basis of company style...

...The drinking scenes in which the monks tippled from huge trashcan-sized flagons and careened tipsily around were beautiful blends of offbalance and sheer madcap fooling...

...Recently the exact nature and extent of this influence has been the subject of extensive debate encouraged by symposia, lectures, and performances...

...The ripply body movements convincingly created the image of the fish, but once the decision was revealed one had little inclination to see the piece again...

...Emotion was deftly forsworn in favor of pure but not so simple motion...

...During their most recent season at the Joyce Theater, Pilobolus offered five works new to New York that continued the dramatic, anecdotal strain in their choreographic development...

...One wonders whether the Central European Expressionist Dance could be developed logically any further and still remain within the broad boundaries of dance...

...The more gothic elements of the piece, like the inclusion of the devil and a semi-mystical, headless, salamander-like creature, remained essentially intrusions...

...The tonal uncertainty of their menace, a combination of cartoon and real hostility, confused rather than clarified the humorous intent of the piece, 8 May 1987: 293 which at times successfully combined the disparate elements of earthly passion, otherworldly apprehension, and slapstick comedy but overall failed to establish a cohesive mood...

...In the summer of 1971, a new manifestation of the sculptural impulse emerged...

...Telcvisitation, choreographed by Mr...

...These approaches continue to be evident in both their recent seasons...

...Fortunately the season was well-sprinkled with older repertory works that displayed the humorous Pilobolus geometry undiminished in charm and appeal...

...That it was an influence, though, in the development of modern dance is no longer ignored...

...The Middle Ages — with its blend of grotesque, erotic, and gullible behavior — has exerted an artistic attraction for Pilobolus over the years...

...Two Dartmouth undergraduates, Moses Pendelton and Jonathon Wolken, were studying dance with resident choreographer Alison Chase...

...The final novelty of the season was Land's Edge, choreographed by Mr...

...Ironically, all this work has been carried on as a living tradition in the United States long after the original Expressionist movement itself was suppressed in Germany by the gauleiters of culture who burned modernist books, "decadent" paintings, and forced uncooperative choreographers and dancers off public stages...

...DON McDONAGH 294: Commonweal...

...It was commissioned and performed by the Hartford Ballet last year, after which it entered Pilobolus's own repertory.- It suggests a dockside encounter between residents of a New England coastal village and a creature from the sea which is eventually washed up dead...

...Pucci's Lure was a one-liner about a solo man portraying a fish, attracted to and wary of an intriguing hook dropped into his watery environment...

...The theories and techniques found their way into the gymnastic programs of the German school system and ultimately into the work of pioneer choreographers Rudolph von Laban, his pupil Mary Wigman, and her pupil, Hanya Holm, among others Holm opened her first American school in New York in 1931...

...Barnett, Miss Chase, and Mr...

...Expressionist Dance evolved from the rhythmic and gestural theories developed by musical pedagogues Francois Delsarte and Emile Jaques-Dalcroze to aid singers and instrumentalists in achieving greater expressiveness and rhythmic awareness in their interpretations...

...Moses Pendelton's CarminaBurana, Side II refers overtly to the music contained on the second side of a recording of Carl Orff s orchestral settings of medieval secular songs...

...Secondarily, it suggests another aspect of the songs' narratives, that of humorous and fantastic presentation...

...That sculptural shaping of space so beloved of Central European Expressionist dancers and creatively developed by Pilobolus for the moment seems to be marking time...

...Despite flashes of inventiveness, the work remained baffling in its intent and uncertain in its individual characterizations...

...In 1973 the company invited two women, former teacher Alison Chase and Julliard-trained Martha Clarke, to join Pilobolus, expanding the company's creative resources to include emotional tension and dramatic encounter...

...The resultant shapes often suggested primitive organisms innocently working their way through complex physical developments without a hint of dramatic tension...

...Two of its new works were based on those wonder-full years when demons and monsters flourished...

...At first, she seems the answer to his dreams, but during the course of the encounters comes to dominate him through a combination of ballroom manners and applied martial arts...

...In a rare moment of retrospection last season that quintessential American choreographer, Martha Graham, revived two early works — Heretic (1929) and Lamentation (1930) — that clearly showed her debt to the Expressionist tradition...

...Barnett and Miss Chase, though placed in a contemporary setting complete with a flickering television set, drew inspiration from the folkloric succubus...

...Underlying the example of Holm has been a concern with performing space as a volume, to be shaped as part of the choreographic design...

...The following year Monkshooa"s Delight (quickly changed to Monkshood's Farewell) initiated a line of emotionally motivated works that presently dominate the repertory...

...Glossed over intentionally or not, was the important influence of Central European Expressionist Dance...

...Since the start of his career in 1939, choreographer Alwin Nikolais, an American pupil of Holm's, has developed the abstract play of pure motion, imaginatively enhanced by lighting and the manipulation of stage properties...

...His pupil, Murray Louis, has emphasized the supple muscularity and quirkiness of the body, often with humorous overtones...

...Laying on their sides, two barrels were used like the all-encompassing shells of two terribly shy creatures attempting a love duet...

...Unchanged was the athleticism that continually drove the body to new and exciting conformations alone or in conjunction with others...

...The mood alternated between attempted domination and accommodation to conclude with a gentle image of them united...

...The current dancers have the skills to perform the repertory beautifully but the special quality of communal choreography that arose from the chemistry of the former group has diminished...

...A sleeping man i.s w...cd by a clinging (literally) woman with whom he has three waltz duets...

...Their limbs probed the outside world tentatively and withdrew protectively until the creatures decided that the other was the sought-after one and drew their barrels close, face to face, to roll off happily...

...They invited fellow students, Lee Harris and Robby Barnett, to join them, and encouraged by guest teacher Murray Louis, they put together a program of gymnastically accomplished and witty dances that quickly brought them wide public attention and acclaim...

...In Nonce, choreographed and performed by Carol Parker and Peter Pucci, a less sinister couple developed an athletically romantic duet...

...The Expressionist movement reached its greatest expansiveness in Germany in the twenties and thirties, though it was not confined there exclusively...

...DANCE CREATURES IN MOTION THE SHAPES OF PILOBOLUS During the emergence of modern dance in the United States between the wars, much emphasis was placed on its essential "American-ness" to distinguish its fresh, new approach from the conventional European art form of ballet...

...The deadpan oddness of their pieces was reinforced by their biological titles, Pilobolus (afungus), Ocellus (a primitive eye), and Spyrogyra (algae...

...Combining their athletic training in winter sports, gymnastics, and modern dance collectively, they created a series of works which explored space with unusual bodily conformations emphasizing unexpected juxtapositions of limbs and ingeniously levered balances...