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Sticking Together

The Pilobolus troupe took over the Joyce Theater for three weeks this August with a rotating pair of programs: one was called “Dreams,” the other, “Memory.” Both titles were good catchalls for the company’s signature brand of surrealist, muscular theatricality. I caught the “Memory” debut, which included the New York City premiere of “Tales from the Underworld”—a sinister exploration of Orpheus and Eurydice themes. It was right at home in the dark “Memory” lineup, which also included silhouette monsters in “Behind the Shadows” and a moody insomniac study, “Noctuary.”

Performance

Pilobolus: “Tales from the Underworld” / “Behind the Shadows” / “Noctuary” / “Branches” / “Untitled”

Place

The Joyce Theater, New York, NY, July 30, 2024

Words

Faye Arthurs

From left: Zachary Weiss, Marlon Feliz, Nathaniel Buchsbaum, Hannah Klinkman, Quincy Ellis, Derion Loman in “Noctuary.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

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As the founding Pilobolus group featured six dancers, so do many of the works in the repertory; and “Tales from the Underworld” was no different. It did credit more creators than usual, however, with 17. (Pilobolus has operated as a collective since its birth in a composition class at Dartmouth College in 1971. The rest of the Memory pieces ranged from 6-10 choreographers each.) The extra voices did not differentiate “Underworld” much from the other works on the bill, but the onstage clarinet performance, by composer Stuart Bogie, did. The program could’ve used more live music.

In “Underworld,” two lovers, Marlon Feliz and Connor Chaparro, were separated by a towering, veiled figure: Hannah Klinkman—riding on the shoulders of Quincy Ellis, Sean Langford, and Derion Loman. As Feliz and Chaparro were about to kiss, Klinkman froze the pair and wrapped Chaparro’s head with her white veil. She and her obscure, amoebic consorts then whisked him away to the underworld, represented by a blackened lower half of the stage. (The clever lighting design was by Thom Weaver.) Feliz journeyed to the nether realm to rescue her beau and there encountered a forest made from human hands and a deranged Klinkman sitting on a human throne. Chaparro was released in exchange for the lily corsage he had given Feliz. But, at the moment the reunited couple tried to kiss again, Klinkman repeated her kidnapping, this time claiming Feliz as her prisoner. Chaparro was left bereft, and Feliz’s body disappeared as the white gauze around her head floated up and curlicued (fanned by darkly clad dancers), symbolic of her departing soul.

The plot, by dramatist Aaron Posner, and its execution were first rate: good prop work, good acting, clear storytelling. But “Underworld” got stuck in a lugubrious rut of too many people being slowly carried around in dim lighting. Even the reunion pas de deux between Feliz and Chaparro was diluted by the murky presence of two other couples performing similar moves on either side of them, just out of their spotlight. This constant group interconnectedness is Pilobolus’s shtick. After all, their name comes from a phototropic fungus that attaches itself like Velcro to whatever host it can find. In many instances, the imagery they make from surprisingly intertwined bodies is arresting—reminiscent of Salvador Dali’s “Voluptuous Death,” a skull fashioned from the odd posing of seven naked women. But sometimes all the hauling around gets old.

PiIobolus in “Noctuary.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

“Noctuary,” which preceded “Underworld” on the program, also suffered from too many group manipulations in smoky darkness. Yet it too had vivid moments, like when Klinkman was suspended upside down by the group as if in utero. She was then tumultuously born through the chute of her colleagues’ bodies, with a tie-dyed piece of fabric tethering her like an umbilical cord (fabric is major prop in many Pilobolus dances). Later, the cloth was draped over the men’s backs as she and Feliz lay across them: two lovers floating off the ground centerstage in a double bed. Jad Abumrad’s score sampled rain sounds, opera, and Chopin’s nocturnes to enhance the dreamscape land of middle-of-the-night fears and regrets.

“Noctuary” and “Underworld” had stunning moments, but they took on heavy subjects and they dragged at times. The troupe fared best in more lighthearted works, where the movements were quirkier and bound to witty jokes. Although, “Behind the Shadows,” a shadow puppet show created in collaboration with Steven Banks—the lead writer of “Sponge Bob SquarePants”—was a tad too light. The cast arranged themselves into some very cool silhouette shapes behind a screen: a seahorse, an elephant, a rat drinking a coke. But the music, by David Poe, kept up the refrain: “if it gives you joy, you don’t have to explain it,” as the cheery cast spun the screen for behind-the-scenes peeks while prepping each tableau. Huh? Why explain it, then?

Pilobolus in “Untitled.” Photograph by Brigid Pierce

“Branches,” a 2017 commission for the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, closed the show with just the right blend of absurdity and athleticism. Like Mark Morris in “L’Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato” the collective behind this dance (Renée Jaworski and Matt Kent in collaboration with Itamar Kubovy, Mark Fucik, Antoine Banks-Sullivan, Nathaniel Buchsbaum, Krystal Butler, Isabella Diaz, Heather Jean Favretto, and Jacob Micheal Warren) went for avian literalism over allegory. At one point, the sextet lip-synched to real birdsong recordings. Sean Langford’s squawking ventriloquism was hysterical. The score was as much of a collaboration as the choreography, and it included a mashup of “Ren and Stimpy” and Olivier Messiaen (as well as David Van Tieghem, David Darling, Riley Lee, and Stuart Bogie). Simple stagecraft shone again here: a large pool of light was an effective birdbath setting for the dancers’ shimmies and splashing. Synchronized somersaults provided the most freewheeling movement of the night. How nice to see the dancers standing on their own two feet and moving in unison for a spell. There was even a solo, as Connor Chaparro hilariously went rogue with his mating display.           

But the best work on the program was the oldest and the oddest: “Untitled,” by the original sextet in 1975. This terrifically bizarre piece featured two women clad in voluminous Victorian gowns which hid nude men underneath. The men occasionally lifted the women onto their shoulders so that the ladies resembled giantesses. These mannerist dames flirted with two normal-sized gentlemen as if nothing was amiss. At one point, they birthed out their nude steeds and tried on the dandies in the suits as legs. But the men’s fancy brogues were pointing backwards and they faceplanted, so they resaddled up on their original mounts. It was like a demented riff on Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe painting, and it was a great showcase for Feliz and Klinkman, both gifted actresses who carried the night. At its best, Pilobolus transforms human figures through uncanny and destabilizing group vignettes, somehow unearthing deeper insights about human behavior in the process. They have been doing this for over 50 years. What boggles my mind is how such a vast and shifting cast of creators and collaborators makes for one of the most consistent choreographic vocabularies and stylistic ethea around.     

Faye Arthurs

Faye Arthurs is a former ballet dancer with New York City Ballet. She chronicled her time as a professional dancer in her blog Thoughts from the Paint. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Fordham University. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their sons.

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