Pilobolus’s ‘Other Worlds Collection’ is Out of This World

Pilobolus has been pushing the boundaries of dance since its founding at Dartmouth College in 1971. And walking into The Granada Theatre on Wednesday and seeing the six company members on stage in full view of the audience, wearing sweats during their warmups while stretching and flipping and otherwise defying gravity, I knew we were in for a different kind of night.  

Dance Captain Hannah Klinkman introduced the show by asking the audience to silence their phones because we were going on a “spaceship galactic journey” with different gravity, time, smells, air, and the cell phone frequencies would interfere with that. 

Then it was time for takeoff. And what a delightful “trip” it was.

A whimsical and thought provoking piece “Branches” was up first. All six almost-but-not-quite nude dancers expressed joyful movements through the cycles of flora and fauna embodying leaves, trees, birds, and natural wonders like the sun and the wind through an impressively athletic series of lifts and formations. 

The women’s duet, “Bloodlines,” was up next, an exploration of the cycle of life as children grow up to support their predecessors. Klinkman, who danced with Jessica Robling, described this dance as being about “the circular nature of caregiving.” It’s the creation of artistic directors Matt Kent and Renée Jaworski from a time when they each found themselves in the “sandwich years,” and sought to explore it on the stage. 

Puffy cotton clouds lined the stage in the charming, lighthearted piece “Flight,” which explores our fascination with the skies. A single dancer starts the piece out speaking gibberish and arranging the clouds to her satisfaction, then three aviators, outfitted with bomber jackets and simulating a cockpit, are joined by a person with a playful paper airplane in a fanciful number that was created in recognition of Pilobolus’s 50 years of collaborative contributions to dance.

After intermission we journeyed to “Pseudopodia,” with a lone dancer (Klinkman) looking naked but shiny as she twists and rolls to a percussive score. This piece was born from early Pilobolean experiments in movement, and while I enjoyed it, the complicated formations and choreography of the larger pieces were more to my taste. 

The whole show was inventive and fun and quite entertaining, but the final piece, “Lamentation Variations” was a cut above the rest, at least to my eye. Created to honor the centennial anniversary of the Martha Graham Dance Company — GRAHAM100 — this piece was commissioned as an interpretation of Graham’s seminal work, “Lamentation,” as part of the Lamentation Variations Project. The use of stretchy white jersey tubes as choreographic elements were the most direct nod to Graham, with the clever employment of complicated group formations and projection elements onto the costumes. 

Graham’s work in this piece has been described as a “moving sculpture,” also an apt description for the Pilobolus variation. It truly is an exceptional reconstruction and reimagining of Graham’s classic solo, which somehow manages to seamlessly mesh the distinct kinetic gymnastic Pilobolus style with Graham’s style.  

The stated mission of Pilobolus is to create, perform, and preserve dance; expand and diversify audiences; and teach dancers, non-dancers, and organizations to harness creative and collaborative potential through the joy of movement, a task they more than lived up to at the Granada this week.