The evening continued with the New York premiere of “Awaken Heart,” yet another tone switch from the preceding works. “Awaken Heart” was distinctly softer—it felt like a danced lullaby. Created by Pilobolus’s co-artistic directors Renée Jaworski and Matt Kent, former Pilobolus member Gaspard Louis, and in collaboration with Pilobolus dancers Nathaniel Buchsbaum, Marlon Feliz, Hannah Klinkman, and Zack Weiss, “Awaken Heart” felt like a shroud of safety and security, an easy-to-watch work that gave to the audience, asking very little in return. The dancers were effortlessly effortful—watching them glide and flow felt as natural as they looked. 

“Untitled,” the next piece on the program, returned the evening to humor, albeit with a dose of underlying commentary. “Untitled” follows two ball gown-clad women (Marlon Feliz and Hannah Klinkman) as they mature from young women, to mothers, to old women—and throughout, the women rise to twice their heights, supported by two male company dancers whose legs are the only thing visible beneath the women’s skirts. 

As New York Times dance critic Jennifer Dunning wrote in her 1993 review of the work, “One can watch the dance as magical shape play and illusion or as social commentary.” In 2023, it’s hard to watch “Untitled” without picking up on a gender role-related undertone. The work touched on the male gaze, but the women—instead of appearing manipulated and used—had a certain power, emphasized in no small part by their towering height. And though the men beneath the skirts were supporting the women and putting them on their high pedestal, when the men are revealed to be nude beneath the skirts, the women’s dresses, too, became a sort of power—both in their ability to shroud and protect, and, at one point, in their transformation to makeshift thrones.