Pilobolus Modern Dance to Perform at Joyce Theater

A fungus that grew into an international dance phenomenon, Pilobolus performs a season full of "stunning physical feats and visual surprises, a peek or two into the crannies of the heart, and lots of humor, both awful and sublime." (The New York Times). Highlights include premieres created in collaboration with Michael Moschen and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, two artists whose work takes the very definition of dance to new frontiers. The collaboration with physicist, juggler, dancer Moschen unites the underlying spirit of Pilobolus's work--support, humanity, connection—with an artist similarly fascinated with the emotional and physical properties governing human interaction.

And the collaboration with Cherkaoui, a "bright young star of contemporary European dance," (Los Angeles Times), equally promises to defy the established boundaries of visual and kinetic artistry. Set against the gritty, saturated colors of LA's Eastside streets, Skyscrapers explores the melancholy, understated elegance of the tango, quintessential street dance, drenched in overtones of love, romance, and loss. Pilobolus once again joins Trish Sie (co-creator of last year's Grammy-nominated Pilobolus/OK Go video and live dance, "All Is Not Lost") to imagine Sie's brilliant new video for OK Go's Skyscrapers as a work for the live stage.

This quick-change duet follows a never-ending, always-changing journey in search of connection. Sandwiched in between are audience favorites gleaned from Pilobolus' repertory, a bag of tricks embracing forty-one years of fun. See the performances of Pilobolus at the Joyce Theater from July 16 - August 11, 2012.

About Pilobolus

Pilobolus is a modern performance company, founded in 1971, that to this day wears its revolutionary stripes on its sleeves. In keeping with its fundamentally collective creative process, Pilobolus Dance Theatre now curates and convenes groups of diverse artists---including the MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory, Art Spiegelman, OK Go, Radiolab, and many others---to make inventive, athletic, witty, collaborative performance works on stage and screen using the human body as a medium for expression. Pilobolus makes art to build community. It teaches its group-based creative process to performers and non-dancers alike through popular, unique educational projects and programs.

This collection of activities is called the Pilobolus Institute. Pilobolus also applies its method of creative invention to a wide range of movement services for film, advertising, publishing, commercial clients, and corporate events. This division is called Pilobolus Creative Services. The 2012 season marks Pilobolus' 41st year. In keeping with the energy and spirit of its biological namesake---a phototropic fungus that thrives in farmyards----the company has continued to grow toward the light, expanding and refining its unique methods of collective creative production to assemble a repertoire of over 100 choreographic works. While it has become a stable and influential force in the world of dance, Pilobolus remains as protean as ever, looking forward to the next 40 years of collaborating on the future.