Pilobolus:Fungus Primus
GRESKOVIC, ROBERT
On Dance PILOBOLUS: FUNGUS PRIMUS BY ROBERT GRESKOVIC The presence on Broadway last month of the Pilobolus Dance Theater proved wildly popular with dance/theater audiences. Among dance/theater...
...The most popular ensemble work —it closes every program—is Untitled (1975...
...Untitled is so accomplished, it exposes its mechanisms at the same time that it weaves its mystery and magic...
...Early Pilobolus in its linear logic, it is nevertheless a mesmerizing study of a lanky young man who rolls into a soft ball of quiet and forceful energy as he travels back and forth in compact somersaults...
...Chase arrests attention with the beauty of her smooth, strong body and the inscrutable calm of her heart-shaped face...
...In Ciona, a 1973 work for all six dancers, the painterly elements are still dominant, but the frontal formality has given way to certain spaciousness...
...Although the entire Eve seemed unwieldy at its Philadelphia premier in January 1977, it included moments that showcased individual talents...
...He launches into a whirling dervish tangle with the jingling strap, stuns it into submission and finally caresses his new-found (fresh-killed...
...Ocellus offers a breathtaking chain of metamorphi-zing figure studies, and also enunciates the esthetic of Pilobolus' body language...
...Pilobolus has no antecedent, and besides, who could have expected art innovation from the Ivy, jock confines of Dartmouth...
...they are symmetrical and asymmetrical arrangements, one passing into another with the conscious frontality of low-relief friezes...
...When she lets fly with a spastic, I-can't-stop-dancing burst of energy, you know you are in the presence of an irrepressible character performer...
...In Ocellus, the earliest piece (1972), Pilobolus' concern for configurations made of interlocked bodies is defined and redefined through continually shifting poses...
...Wolken has a tumbling solo called Pseudopodia set to a soft percussive score by him and Pendleton...
...In Monkshood Farewell, a 1974 group piece with a substantial score by Robert Dennis, the formerly neutral space becomes a locale, just as the knots of figures become more than intricate totems...
...Pendleton has a demonic smile and a slyly furrowed brow that intensify his control of a solo he performs balanced on one leg...
...Pendleton and Wolken began as a duo in '71...
...Their almost nude bodies rise from isolated, hunched positions on the floor into a piggy-back figure with multiple limbs...
...When viewed chronologically, the 13 works performed in the season just ended reveal Pilobolus' progress from linear formality to painterly expression, to a fuller ex-pansiveness...
...Whereas millskin body suits or near-nudity clothed Pilobolus' earlier creations in uniformity, Untitled juxtaposes full "proper" dress for two of the men and the two women—vested suits and top hats on the former, long-skirted dresses and hats on the latter—alongside total nudity for the remaining two men...
...Clarke pulls you into her performance so completely you forget about the sentimental perfumes that her characters might otherwise exude...
...Clarke, the only one with a traditional dance background, has the most solos...
...Barnett and Tracy have parts, too, but these are not as striking as the others...
...Perhaps the founders chose to name themselves after a fungus once they realized they would be neither fish nor fowl to hunters of serious dance...
...It contains their distinctive mechanisms—interconnected poses and in-tercoordinated movement—as well as indications of the individual personalities of the members...
...After bounding and pouncing his way around the stage he encounters and investigates a long animal made of bells...
...As this Middle Ages tableaux is shaped, the merry players are defined as distinct citizens...
...Paradoxically, though, she is the least concerned with classic dance values and devotes the majority of her spots to pantomime...
...friend...
...Moses Pendleton, Jonathan Wol-ken, Robert Barnett, Michael Tracy, Alison Chase, and Martha Clarke have all been Piloboli since 1974...
...There is nothing predictable or narratively linear about these constant manipulations (aided by a Dennis score that vacillates between moodiness and festiveness...
...Clad only in dance belts, the men's firm physiques are bared for maximum effect...
...Wolken, the thinnest and longest-limbed in the cast, has a looseness and opened-mouth vacuity that is aptly crowned by a matted head of pull-able, crinkly hair...
...A unit of four males traverses the stage with a hypnotic determination that is in parallel phase to the muffled gurgles and bleeps of Wolken and Pendleton's score, and in glowing response to Neil Japolis' diffused lighting...
...Clarke shows rubber-faced articulation and has correspondingly rattling, naughty eyeballs...
...An animated, rippling score by John Appleton makes this an ideal company sampler—a Pilobolus palette...
...Thus one figure on another's shoulders is transformed into the surreal image of an elongated woman sprouting hefty male legs underneath her skirt...
...Pendleton and Chase have a solid repertory of duets, the newest being Shizen, which is accompanied by Riley Lee's haunting bamboo flute solo...
...While Shizen repeats some of the feats of Chase and Pendleton's previous duets (Terra Cotta and Alraune), the sculptural beauties arrived at indicate something beyond physical intimacy and partnership...
...Together and in solos, they have produced a repertory unique on our dance horizon...
...by '73 there were six, and Tracy's replacement of a drop-out in '74 completed the present ensemble...
...The nattily attired gents engage in slow motion combat, and the dance ends with the male contingent supine and sedate, the women rocking between their suitors' knees...
...These are not muscle-flexing posturing...
...Locked in this embrace, they alternately support and push off against each other as they move into darkness...
...The smaller-scale works—duets and solos—are a way for the Piloboli to be alone with their audience...
...For the first time the Piloboli look the audience straight in the eye, as if they finally felt confident enough to focus on the spectator, instead of simply on their actions...
...Bare-chested, with stringy fur covering half his legs, he is a frisky and impulsive goat-like creature...
...This wild and sometimes tender two-footed beast displays Barnett as a man of inexhaustible vigor and boundless generosity...
...they now indicate horses and riders with lances, assorted medieval gargoyles and grotesques...
...The Eve of Samhain, a full group work that postdates Untitled, has been temporarily shelved, except for a solo excerpt for Barnett...
...In Farewell, the shy introspection of the previous, more formal works is replaced by maturity...
...Paglianio is about an earnest, forlorn clown and Vagabond deals with a fifth-rate trouper, but neither falls into the cliche that is built into these themes...
...It is both a logical progression and departure from Farewell...
...Among dance/theater critics, however, there were some who could not comfortably trust Pilobolus' particular movement and mime workings and dismissed it as simply "one note" or as "clever, but limited...
...Since Pilobolus has lately concentrated on these solos and duets, the company should be primed to offer us another group effort, one that will perpetuate the originality of this remarkable troupe...
...The women's lower halves—the men—are in turn erections, newborn innocents and bearers of burden...
...It deserves a comeback...
...Such confusion, caution and contempt is, I suspect, a result of the group's origins— and originality...
Vol. 61 • January 1978 • No. 2
