Pilobolus (dance company)
Encyclopedia
Pilobolus is a contemporary dance
company whose origins are traced to a 1971 Dartmouth College
dance class taught by Alison Becker Chase
. The group first began performing in October 1971.
The founding artists of the original collective were Robby Barnett, Alison Chase, Martha Clarke, Lee Harris, Moses Pendleton, Jonathan Wolken.
, Alison Becker Chase
, Martha Clarke
, Lee Harris, Moses Pendleton
, Michael Tracy and Jonathan Wolken
. Harris departed around 1975, leaving six members: four men and two women. Pendleton left in 1983 after having collaborated with Chase in 1980 to form the offshoot group Momix
. Chase left in 2006 and has gone on to found her own company. Wolken died in 2010.
Pilobolus performances are characterized by a strong element of physical interaction between the bodies of the performers and exaggerations or contortion
s of the human form (or other anthropomorphic forms), often verging on gymnastics
.
"Pilobolus has received many awards, among them the Berlin Critic's Prize, the Brandeis Award
, the Scotsman Award for performances at the Edinburgh Festival
, the New England Theatre Conference Prize, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts Award for Excellence and, in 1997, a Primetime Emmy Award
for outstanding achievement in cultural programming. In June 2000 Pilobolus received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement in choreography, and in 2004 the company was the subject of a feature profile on CBS
' 60 Minutes
. In 2010, Pilobolus was the first collective ever to receive a Dance Magazine Award"
In 1999, Pilobolus collaborated with Maurice Sendak
and Arthur Yorinks
in the production of "A Selection", a work with the Holocaust as its theme (documented in the film Last Dance).
More recently, they appeared as performers in the 2007 television broadcast of the 79th Academy Awards
. Their act was done in silhouette behind a white translucent screen, where they formed various figures at intervals during the show: first, the Oscar statue itself; then logos (or scenes) from various films: Happy Feet
, Little Miss Sunshine
, Snakes on a Plane
, The Devil Wears Prada
, and The Departed
. At one point, they were introduced to the audience, wearing loose-fitting wraps. The act for Snakes on a Plane included host Ellen DeGeneres
, who said afterwards, "They're naked!" Whether she was joking or serious was left to the imagination, but their website does contain some photos of nude or near-nude poses.
Pilobolus has, at present, three branches: Pilobolus Dance Theatre (a touring company); The Pilobolus Institute (educational programming); and Pilobolus Creative Services (movement services for film, advertising, publishing, commercial clients, and corporate events).
Pilobolus Dance Theatre, the group's performance flagship, is based in Washington Depot, Connecticut. It currently possesses a repertory of over 100 works.
. Other ICP collaborators include author Maurice Sendak
, puppet master Basil Twist
, singer/composer David Poe, SpongeBob SquarePants head writer Steven Banks, cartoonist Art Spiegelman
, the rock band Ok Go
, the MIT Distributed Robotics Lab, and Takuya Murimatsu of Dairakudakan. The ICP is considered the most significant artistic undertaking for Pilobolus in many years.
captured Pilobolus in a variety of colorful Israeli landscapes, including the Dead Sea
, Old Jaffa
, markets in Jerusalem, hot springs, and the streets of Haifa
, to name a few. In some photos, the group is featured with their bodies interwoven and overlapping, or contorted in strikingly artistic poses.
Contemporary dance
Contemporary dance is a genre of concert dance that employs compositional philosophy, rather than choreography, to guide unchoreographed movement...
company whose origins are traced to a 1971 Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
dance class taught by Alison Becker Chase
Alison Becker Chase
Alison Becker Chase taught the dance class at Dartmouth that led to founding of Pilobolus Dance Theater in 1971. As a founding artistic director of Pilobolus she worked with the company from 1971 to 2006....
. The group first began performing in October 1971.
The founding artists of the original collective were Robby Barnett, Alison Chase, Martha Clarke, Lee Harris, Moses Pendleton, Jonathan Wolken.
The company
The founding and early members were Robby BarnettRobby Barnett
Robby Barnett is one of the founders of the dance company Pilobolus. He and other students in a dance class at Darthmouth College started using a unique weight-sharing approach to partnering, what Robby called four men twisted together like proteins...
, Alison Becker Chase
Alison Becker Chase
Alison Becker Chase taught the dance class at Dartmouth that led to founding of Pilobolus Dance Theater in 1971. As a founding artistic director of Pilobolus she worked with the company from 1971 to 2006....
, Martha Clarke
Martha Clarke
Martha Clarke is an American theater director and choreographer noted for her multidisciplinary approach to theatre, dance, and opera productions. She is the creator of plotless, dreamlike works that are perhaps described by the term "moving paintings. Her work frequently emphasizes striking...
, Lee Harris, Moses Pendleton
Moses Pendleton
Moses Pendleton is a choreographer, dancer and the artistic director of MOMIX. MOMIX is a dance company that he formed in 1981 as an offshoot of the ground-breaking Pilobolus, which he had co-founded while a senior at Dartmouth College in 1971. He remained a full-time member with the company...
, Michael Tracy and Jonathan Wolken
Jonathan Wolken
Abraham Jonathan Wolken was one of the original dancers and a co-founder of Pilobolus dance company in 1971, which The New York Times in his obituary calls "one of the most popular modern-dance companies in the world"...
. Harris departed around 1975, leaving six members: four men and two women. Pendleton left in 1983 after having collaborated with Chase in 1980 to form the offshoot group Momix
Momix
MOMIX is a company of dancer-illusionists known internationally for presenting work of exceptional inventiveness and physical beauty. For 30 years, MOMIX has been celebrated for its ability to conjure up a world of surrealistic images using props, light, shadow, humor and the human body.Under the...
. Chase left in 2006 and has gone on to found her own company. Wolken died in 2010.
Pilobolus performances are characterized by a strong element of physical interaction between the bodies of the performers and exaggerations or contortion
Contortion
thumb|upright|Contortionist performingContortion is an unusual form of physical display which involves the dramatic bending and flexing of the human body. Contortion is often part of acrobatics and circus acts...
s of the human form (or other anthropomorphic forms), often verging on gymnastics
Gymnastics
Gymnastics is a sport involving performance of exercises requiring physical strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, and balance. Internationally, all of the gymnastic sports are governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique with each country having its own national governing body...
.
"Pilobolus has received many awards, among them the Berlin Critic's Prize, the Brandeis Award
Brandeis Award
Brandeis Award may refer to:* Brandeis Award * Brandeis Award * Brandeis Award , from Federal Trade Commission...
, the Scotsman Award for performances at the Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh Festival
The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
, the New England Theatre Conference Prize, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts Award for Excellence and, in 1997, a Primetime Emmy Award
Primetime Emmy Award
The Primetime Emmy Awards are awards presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in recognition of excellence in American primetime television programming...
for outstanding achievement in cultural programming. In June 2000 Pilobolus received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement in choreography, and in 2004 the company was the subject of a feature profile on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
' 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
. In 2010, Pilobolus was the first collective ever to receive a Dance Magazine Award"
In 1999, Pilobolus collaborated with Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak is an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. He is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, published in 1963.-Early life:...
and Arthur Yorinks
Arthur Yorinks
Arthur Yorinks has written and directed for opera, theater, dance, film, and radio and is the author of over thirty-five acclaimed and award-winning books, including "Hey, Al," a children's book which earned the Caldecott Medal in 1987....
in the production of "A Selection", a work with the Holocaust as its theme (documented in the film Last Dance).
More recently, they appeared as performers in the 2007 television broadcast of the 79th Academy Awards
79th Academy Awards
The 79th Academy Awards ceremony , honored the best films of 2006 and took place on February 25, 2007 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on ABC. Ellen DeGeneres hosted the ceremony for the first time. The producer was Laura Ziskin. The announcers were Don LaFontaine and Gina Tuttle.The nominees were...
. Their act was done in silhouette behind a white translucent screen, where they formed various figures at intervals during the show: first, the Oscar statue itself; then logos (or scenes) from various films: Happy Feet
Happy Feet
Happy Feet is a 2006 American-Australian computer-animated family film with music, directed and co-written by George Miller. It was produced at Sydney-based visual effects and animation studio Animal Logic for Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures and Kingdom Feature Productions and was released...
, Little Miss Sunshine
Little Miss Sunshine
Little Miss Sunshine is a 2006 American comedy-drama film. The road movie's plot follows a family's trip to a children's beauty pageant.Little Miss Sunshine was the directorial film debut of the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The screenplay was written by first-time writer...
, Snakes on a Plane
Snakes on a Plane
Snakes on a Plane is a 2006 American horror-action-thriller film directed by David R. Ellis and starring Samuel L. Jackson. It was released by New Line Cinema on August 18, 2006 in North America...
, The Devil Wears Prada
The Devil Wears Prada (film)
The Devil Wears Prada is a 2006 comedy-drama film, a loose screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel of the same name. It stars Anne Hathaway as Andrea Sachs, a recent college graduate who goes to New York City and gets a job as a co-assistant to powerful and demanding fashion magazine...
, and The Departed
The Departed
The Departed is a 2006 American crime thriller film, fashioned as a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs. The film was directed by Martin Scorsese and written by William Monahan...
. At one point, they were introduced to the audience, wearing loose-fitting wraps. The act for Snakes on a Plane included host Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen Lee DeGeneres is an American stand-up comedienne, television host and actress. She hosts the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and was also a judge on American Idol for one year, having joined the show in its ninth season....
, who said afterwards, "They're naked!" Whether she was joking or serious was left to the imagination, but their website does contain some photos of nude or near-nude poses.
Pilobolus has, at present, three branches: Pilobolus Dance Theatre (a touring company); The Pilobolus Institute (educational programming); and Pilobolus Creative Services (movement services for film, advertising, publishing, commercial clients, and corporate events).
Pilobolus Dance Theatre, the group's performance flagship, is based in Washington Depot, Connecticut. It currently possesses a repertory of over 100 works.
International Collaborators Project
In 2007, Pilobolus established the International Collaborators Project (ICP), in which the dance company teams up with visiting artists annually to expand its unique collective choreographic process. To celebrate this inaugural event, Pilobolus Artistic Director Robby Barnett invited star Israeli director and choreographer Inbal Pinto and her artistic collaborator, actor and designer Avshalom Pollak, that same year to join the company in its studios in ConnecticutConnecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
. Other ICP collaborators include author Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak is an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. He is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, published in 1963.-Early life:...
, puppet master Basil Twist
Basil Twist
Basil Twist is a New York City-based puppeteer who is best known for his underwater puppet show, "Symphonie Fantastique".-Life and work:Originally from San Francisco, Basil Twist is a third generation puppeteer. He graduated from the École Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in...
, singer/composer David Poe, SpongeBob SquarePants head writer Steven Banks, cartoonist Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book memoir, Maus. His works are published with his name in lowercase: art spiegelman.-Biography:Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish Jews...
, the rock band Ok Go
OK Go
OK Go is a rock band originally from Chicago, Illinois, USA, now residing in Los Angeles, California, USA. The band is composed of Damian Kulash , Tim Nordwind , Dan Konopka and Andy Ross , who joined them in 2005, replacing Andy Duncan...
, the MIT Distributed Robotics Lab, and Takuya Murimatsu of Dairakudakan. The ICP is considered the most significant artistic undertaking for Pilobolus in many years.
Calendar
The 2009 Pilobolus calendar was created while the company was on tour in Israel in January 2008, in collaboration with the Israeli Consulate in New York. Renowned photographer Robert WhitmanRobert Whitman
Robert Whitman is an American artist best known for his seminal theater pieces of the early 1960s combining visual and sound images, actors, film, slides, and evocative props in environments of his own making...
captured Pilobolus in a variety of colorful Israeli landscapes, including the Dead Sea
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea , also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world...
, Old Jaffa
Jaffa
Jaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv creating the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical story of the prophet Jonah.-Etymology:...
, markets in Jerusalem, hot springs, and the streets of Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
, to name a few. In some photos, the group is featured with their bodies interwoven and overlapping, or contorted in strikingly artistic poses.
External links
- Records of the Pilobolus Dance Theatre in Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College
- Pilobolus Dance Theater from the Columbia EncyclopediaColumbia EncyclopediaThe Columbia Encyclopedia is a one-volume encyclopedia produced by Columbia University Press and sold by the Gale Group. First published in 1935, and continuing its important relationship with Columbia University, the encyclopedia underwent major revisions in 1950 and 1963; the current edition is...
- "Pilobolus Dance Theatre - The Brass Ring, Night of the Dark Moon, Ben's Admonition, Day Two" review from ExploreDance.com
- "“Fungi-Form”: The Story of Pilobolus Dance Theater" from Ballet-Dance Magazine
- TEDTalks - Pilobolus performance at the TED Conference 2005.
- The Fairfield Mirror's Interview with Artistic Director Jonathan Wolken
- Archival footage of Pilobolus performing Ocellus in 1985 at Jacob's Pillow