Pilobolus bringing dance evolution to Hancher in Iowa City

Matt Kent has helped zombies lurch, but these days, he’s guiding the living, breathing “feisty arts organism” that is Pilobolus, based in Washington, Conn.

Iowa City audiences have seen this non-traditional dance troupe over the years, and Pilobolus is returning Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023, to mark its shared 50th birthday celebration with Hancher.

And Kent, once a Pilobolus dancer before becoming its artistic director, also is 50 years old. But his dancers aren’t. They range in age from early 20s to late 30s, so he said this milestone year means different things to different people, especially with the young dancers.

If you go

What: Pilobolus: “The Big Five-Oh!” tour

Where: Hancher Auditorium, 141 E. Park Rd., Iowa City

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023

Tickets: $30 to $50 adults; $10 to $40 college students and youths; Hancher Box Office, 1-(800) HANCHER or (319) 335-1160, or hancher.uiowa.edu/2022-23/Pilobolus

Program: “Megawatt,” 2004; “Behind the Shadows,” 2021; “On the Nature of Things,” 2014; intermission; “The Ballad,” 2022; “BRANCHES,” 2017

Artists’ website: pilobolus.org/

“In one way, it means absolutely nothing at all, because we’re just doing what we always do, and we're going to keep doing it,” Kent said by phone from JFK Airport in New York City on Jan. 24, en route to a tour stop in Malibu, Calif.

And at times, he finds himself in awe of “what a huge milestone it is.”

“There are other times that we’re really just so grateful to be able to continue to evolve a company that really started as a collective,” he said, explaining that Pilobolus is not an “autocratic dance company” that is trying to maintain the vision of its founder.

History

Named after a light-loving fungus, the troupe had many founders who combined efforts at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in 1971, and saw their class project mushroom into something tangible.

According to the history notes on the troupe’s website, the seed for Pilobolus germinated when “Moses Pendleton, an English literature major and cross-country skier; Jonathan Wolken, a philosophy major and fencer; and Steve Johnson, a premed student and pole vaulter were enrolled in a dance composition class taught by Alison Becker Chase.”

When they created their first dance, they titled it “Pilobolus,” after Pilobolus crystallinus, a mushroom whose spores stick wherever they land. Wolken’s father was studying the pilobolus in his biology lab, and that name stuck.

Chase, Pendleton, Wolken, Michael Tracy, Martha Clarke and Robby Barnett ran with the project, creating dozens of dance pieces as the company grew to perform around the world, on television talk shows and news features, for the Academy Awards and on “Sesame Street.”

“Pilobolus … really was founded on the 1970s realization of 1960s ideals of collaboration and collective thought and group effort,” Kent said, “so that allows us to continue that. And if you look around the world, it’s so clear that we are in dire need for the ability to collaborate and to have diverse thoughts that can work together to create something delightful or meaningful or beautiful.”

In Iowa City

“The Big Five Oh!” repertoire changes according to the venue, and at Hancher, will open with a piece of the past, the 2004 work “Megawatt,” by founder Wolken.

“It is a high-octane, frenetic, almost apoplectic, crazy piece that opens the program in a way that when these guys finish this piece, you just sit there and think, ‘How is there going to be any more dancing — they’re done right? The show’s over,’ because they just leave it all on the floor. It’s great,” Kent said, adding that the piece is “lovely.”

It’s followed by a newer work, “Behind the Shadows.” Kent said the troupe has become known for its shadow work after creating composite images for the 2007 Oscars telecast. This 2021 dance, however, takes audiences behind the scenes, showing how they form these shadow compositions.

The idea arose after wired.com filmed Pilobolus for an online Masterminds video in 2018, in which the dancers joined their bodies to form various shapes — including an elephant and a sea horse — behind a screen, projected as shadow images for viewers.

“It’s a little fun for us behind the scenes, because we want to move the screen out of the way and then it comes back,” Kent said, giving audiences a glimpse of their process. “It's a real kind of family fun — a little jewel, a little piece of candy, which we love.”

Rounding out the first half is “On the Nature of Things,” a trio work from 2014 that takes place on a pedestal about three feet off the ground and three feet in diameter.

“In some ways, we base the piece on the idea that ‘Art lives in constraints and dies in freedom,’ one of our favorite da Vinci quotes,” Kent said. “(It’s also) the subject matter of some of our school shows, because rules seem like such a drag, but those constraints actually help our art.

“So we physically constrained the space they could work in, putting them in this precarious height on this (base). And the piece itself is a nod to Milton and the Adam and Eve serpent’s story, and the images that you see come out of this when we were studying the rediscovery of antiquity during the Renaissance. So there’s a lot of sculptural poses and counter posed twists with their bodies, and those kinds of lines.”

The second half features two works built around lessons to be learned from nature: “The Ballad,” the newest piece, which debuted this past fall, and “BRANCHES,” from 2017.

Describing the overall program, Kent said: “There’s zing; there’s fast; there’s humor; there’s classical; there’s something to think about that addresses social issues; there’s positivity; and there’s nature, so everybody should have their multidimensional passports ready because when you see this level of show, you’re going to go to different worlds.”

Evolution

Pilobolus is poised to continue collaborating among the six resident dancers, the creative staff and partners far and wide — breathing and growing through new works and student outreach.

“We’ve always considered ourselves an organism,” Kent said. “That seems like a much warmer analogy than thinking of it as some kind of machine. Once you start thinking of things in terms of an industry, whether you’re talking about food or art, things change a little bit, and things do need to change.

“We’re viewing this as an organism, and it reminds us that we’re participating in something that is bigger than ourselves and something that will live beyond us. We hope that this will last another 50 years and are thinking about succession for ourselves, already.

“Pilobolus possesses what is called emergent systems, or emergent qualities,” he said. “And what I mean by that, is the company itself, and the pieces that you see on stage, possess and present qualities that their individual parts don’t have.

“It’s like when you take an airplane apart, none of those parts have the quality of flight, but you put them together, something else happens. So that’s another sense of an organism, just like the body. Where do I start, where do I end?”

One of the company’s biggest shifts has come with its education and outreach efforts, “changing in a way that can be more inclusive and accessible to more people,” Kent said, building off the idea “that anyone can dance.”

“This company was started by non-dancers,” he said, and a new area of interest has been working with senior citizens in ways that will help them with balance. The pandemic gave Pilobolus time to create 80 videos and turn to online teaching, and when the troupe members come to Iowa City, they intend to work with both students and seniors.

Kent counts as a gift his own evolution the past 10 years, leaping from Pilobolus dancer to artistic director, a position he shares with Renee Jaworski, who also serves as executive director.

“I feel so grateful and fortunate that I’ve been able to carry on this sort of living tradition in practice,” Kent said. “To run a legacy dance company where you also get to express your own artistic impulses is pretty rare and pretty fantastic. And I just am so lucky to work with all these great people.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com