"where acrobatics are liquefied into poetry"
-- New York Times

From performing at the Academy Awards to choreographing the Rockettes, this radically innovative and acclaimed dance company is renowned the world over for its imaginative exploration of what the New York Times called "a conversation between art and athletics."

According to Monte Bohanan, Music Hall Electronic and New Technology Manager, "Truly one of the most amazing modern dance troupes. Elegant, understated and at the same time astonishing. Don’t miss this return engagement!"

About the evening program

The program will include several dances such as "Pseudopia," "Gnomen," and "Megawatt." About these three, The New York Times has said: "How many things can be made of a somersault? With Pilobolus Dance Theatre, where acrobatics are liquefied into poetry, the somersault proves as basic as the upright stance and turnout of the legs are to ballet or as the opposition between contraction and release is to the Martha Graham style. In "Pseudopia" a solo male dancer comes spinning on in a long stream of backward somersaults, sometimes pausing for phenomenal feats of balance. "Gnomen" begins with big, rolling multiple somersaults that contain, we gradually see, two, no, three, no four dancers – like parts of the same wheel. In "Megawatt" six dancers are constantly convulsed. The jolts that pass through their bodies often suggest electric-shock treatment, but the patterns they are sent into are formally geometric…the piece’s sheer physical excitement is hard to resist. The continuity of changing imagery, the easy sensuousness and the wonderful push-me-pull-you surprises of the physicality: These still seem to come right out of their makers’ dreams and into ours."

Note: Some pieces include partial nudity.

About Pilobolus

Pilobolus germinated in the fertile soil of a Dartmouth College dance class in 1971. What emerged was a collaborative choreographic process and unique weight-sharing approach to partnering that gave the young company a nontraditional but powerful new set of skills with which to make dances.

Today Pilobolus is a unique American arts organization of international influence. It has not, however, forsaken its original impetus and remains a deeply committed collaborative effort with three artistic directors and over 25 full and part-time dancers contributing to one of the most popular and varied bodies of work in the history of the field. Nearly four decades of creative production testify to the company’s position as an arts collective of remarkable fruitfulness and longevity.

Pilobolus is based in Washington Depot, Connecticut and performs for stage and television audiences all over the world. Pilobolus works appear in the repertories of major dance companies - the Joffrey, Feld, Ohio, Arizona, and Aspen/Santa Fe Ballets in the U.S., the Ballet National de Nancy et de Lorraine and the Ballet du Rhin in France, and Italy’s Verona Ballet - and the company has recently begun a series of major creative collaborations, including new productions with the famed writer and illustrator, Maurice Sendak; the Israeli choreographic team, Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak; and the remarkable American puppeteer, Basil Twist.

Pilobolus has received a number of prestigious honors, including the Berlin Critic’s Prize, the Brandeis Award, the New England Theatre Conference Prize, and 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 featured on CBS 60 Minutes. In 2007 Robby Barnett, Michael Tracy and Jonathan Wolken received the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Endowment Fellowship from Dartmouth College.

The physical vocabularies of Pilobolus works are not drawn from traditions of codified dance movement but are invented - emerging from intense periods of improvisation and creative play. This process has been the source of much interest, in response to which the company inaugurated the Pilobolus Institute, an educational outreach program using the art of choreography as a model for creative thinking in any field. The Institute offers sustained programs for both children and adults around the country, as well as a series of Leadership Workshops for corporations and business schools. Recent work includes programs at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, and the Babcock School at Wake Forest University. The Institute also maintains an ongoing residency in the Theater Studies Program at Yale University.

The third arm of the company's activity is Pilobolus Creative Services, a choreographic and performance collective providing movement design and production for commercial applications in business and advertising. PCS has made television spots for Mobil, Ford, Toyota, Opel, and Hyundai, created live events for IBM, McKinsey, United Technologies, Dupont, and Merck, and has presented gala performances for Joe Boxer, Marithe Girbaud, MAC Cosmetics and Krizia. In 2007, the company created and presented 6 acclaimed performances during the 79th Annual Academy Awards, as well producing a series of original segments for the Oprah Winfrey Show. PCS has also produced two books for national distribution, Twisted Yoga and The Human Alphabet, and releases an annual calendar of dance photography in collaboration with a number of noted American photographers.

Our 2009-10 season marks the middle of Pilobolus’ 39th year. The company has continued to grow, expanding and refining its unusual collaborative methods to produce a body of over 100 choreographic works, and while it has become a stable and influential force in the world of dance, Pilobolus remains as protean and surprising as ever.