DURHAM, NC - JUNE 20:  Pilobolus performs "Licks" during a photo call June 20, 2013, at the Durham Performing Arts Center in Durham, North Carolina.  (©Grant Halverson/ADF)
DURHAM, NC - JUNE 20: Pilobolus performs "Licks" during a photo call June 20, 2013, at the Durham Performing Arts Center in Durham, North Carolina. (©Grant Halverson/ADF)

Pilobolus Dance Theater Returns May 7-10 with Three Philadelphia Premieres

Pilobolus-Dance-Theater
Credit: Robert Whitman

At the intersection of contemporary dance, gymnastics, technology and playful props stands Pilobolus Dance Theater. The wildly creative troupe returns to Philadelphia May 7-10 for five performances.  Pilobolus performs Thursday, May 7 at 7:30 PM, Friday, May 8 at 8 PM, Saturday, May 9 at 3 PM and 8 PM and Sunday, May 10 at 3 PM at the Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut Street. Tickets are $30-$75. For tickets or for more information, visit AnnenbergCenter.org or call 215.898.3900. Tickets can also be purchased in person at the Box Office.

Led by Artistic Directors Robby Barnett and Michael Tracy and Associate Artistic Directors Matt Kent and Renee Jaworski, Pilobolus brings a collection of new works and classic favorites. The program opens with On The Nature of Things 2014, performed to a stirring Vivaldi score. It is followed by The Transformation (2009), a section from a larger work Shadowland, in which a young woman is transformed. It was created in collaboration with the lead writers for the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. The program also includes  [esc] (2013), co-created with the noted illusionists and sleight of hand masters Penn & Teller. The piece features lots of elements of magic set to popular songs such as “Come Fly With Me” and “You Shook Me All Night Long.

Created in collaboration with the Olivier Award-winning Venezuelan choreographer Javier De Frutos, Untitled 2015 is a physically-daring quintet that takes us through the labyrinth-like mind of a young woman as she confronts lost love. Fragmented memories burst back and forth through a moving door, catching us in an experience that’s at once raging and tender, desolate and intimate. This Philadelphia premiere preview will make its world premiere at the American Dance Festival in June. The performance concludes with one of the company’s classic works, Day Two. This piece enacts the second day of the creation of the world, from its earliest forms of life to the moment at which creatures of the earth take flight into the air. Day Two captures the awe of evolution and the wonder of existence and is set to a soundtrack from Brian Eno and Talking Heads. Interspersed throughout the production, there will be four short films of Pilobolus. Two of the pieces in the performance contain partial nudity.

In addition to the public performances, Pilobolus Dance Theater will be conducting three outreach activities – two Student Discovery programs as part of the Philadelphia International Children’s Festival, Thursday, May 7 and Friday, May 8 at 10 AM; a free Master Class Friday, May 8 at 1 PM; and post-show INSIGHTS talk back with the company following the Friday, May, 8 evening performance.

 

About Pilobolus Dance Theater
Pilobolus, named after a barnyard fungus that propels its spores with extraordinary speed, accuracy, and strength, is a dance company founded by a group of Dartmouth College students in 1971. Pilobolus continually forms diverse collaborations that break down barriers between disciplines and challenge the way we think about dance. Physically and intellectually, the company engages and inspires audiences around the world through performance, education and consultation. Pilobolus propels itself in a variety of directions to reach these goals. The original company Pilobolus Dance Theater has been touring its 118 pieces of repertory to more than 64 countries over the last 43 years. Pilobolus’s Shadowland, the company’s evening-length show currently touring Europe, the Middle East and Asia, has been seen by more than 750,000 people in the five years since it was created.

Pilobolus’s collaborative creative and educational research and development takes place through the Pilobolus Lab, in which the company invites diverse collaborators into residencies to create new work and develop methods to teach Pilobolus’s creative process to individuals and institutions. To date, the Pilobolus Lab has produced collaborations with Etgar Keret & Shira Geffen, Penn & Teller, the MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory, Art Spiegelman, Maurice Sendak, OK Go and Radiolab. Pilobolus’s educational programming, which applies the company’s unique collaborative process to help all kinds of groups communicate and work better together, includes workshops, master classes, residencies, children’s programming and consulting. The company has collaborated with clients such as Avon, Boston Consulting Group, Wharton Business School, Google, the US Olympic committee, the NFL Network, Pfizer and many others. Pilobolus has been featured across the world at the 79th Annual Academy Awards®, and on Oprah, 60 Minutes, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Sesame Street. The company has been recognized with prestigious honors such as the Berlin Critic’s Prize, the Scotsman Award, the Brandeis Award, the Primetime Emmy® Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cultural Programming, the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement in Choreography and a TED Fellowship for presenting at the TED conference in 2005. Pilobolus holds the 2011 Guinness World Record for fitting the most people into a Mini Cooper (26). In 2012, the company was nominated for a Grammy® Award for its interactive music video collaboration with the rock band OK Go and Google Chrome Japan, All is Not Lost. Recently, Pilobolus was honored as the first collective to receive the Dance Magazine Award, which recognizes artists who have made lasting contributions to the field.

Additional photo credit: Grant Halverson

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