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View Full Version : Trip Port: Pilobolus / Miss Adams Diner


nothumb
10-23-2005, 06:31 PM
Saturday night I took my girlfriend to see Pilobolus dance company at Mass MoCA in North Adams. On the way up we ate at the Miss Adams Diner in Adams, MA. It was fun.

I slept between the house and the diner (about 45 mins). The Miss Adams Diner is in an old railcar attached to a building behind it. Sort of a 50's style joint, bright interior with records covering the ceiling. A couple of Ms. Thumb's friends had been and were excited about the variety of french fries offered.

Ms. Thumb got some Mob Fries, which are tossed with garlic and hot peppers, and I had some fries with gravy and cheese. They were pretty good but there was too much gravy and not enough cheese. I also had a double Wisconsiner burger which has a couple of different cheeses on it and was okay. Ms. Thumb liked the atmosphere and the lighthearted 50's pop music on the jukebox. Pretty good for under 20 bucks (including a good tip for our nice waitress).

Pilobolus is a world-famous modern dance company based out of Connecticut and named after a particularly hardy fungus. It was founded by Dartmouth students in the early 70's and was pioneering because most of them were not, as I understand it, dancers prior to this. They incorporated theatricality and also a pretty wild approach to shared weight and lifting/partnering, with much of their choreography developed through contact improvisation as I understand it.

The first piece was new, it was an aquatic-themed piece, sort of like an underwater adventure. There were two female dancers and four men. All were very good. The company used its interesting lifts and partnering techniques to great effect here, creating strange creatures and motions with two or three dancers at once. Ms. Thumb and I agreed that it was an effective and enjoyable piece, if not thematically challenging or 'deep.'

The second piece was an early work, a solo piece from 'The Empty Suitor,' in which I male dancer does a sort of clown routine after being wowed into dizziness by a woman. He goes through an ordeal of walking over rounded poles and becoming entangled with a bench. The dancer was very capable and did a nice job, but I felt the clown/comic acting element lacked pacing and depth. One of the great things about good clown is that the clown doesn't perform; he experiences his foolishness in front of the audience and is merely seeking their approval. It's a fine line and that's sort of a theater concept that most are not familiar with, but as an actor I felt it could have been improved upon.

The third piece was another classic, a duet called 'Symbiosis.' It features a man and a woman, who begin the piece in closed poses and use one another to sort of gain full use of their bodies. This is a very simple concept and could have easily been cliche'd with the typical vocabulary of modern dance. However, the dancers in this piece (originally composed in 1980 I believe) strike such alien and contorted poses, using one another to create shapes the eye is unprepared for, that the piece succeeds by being direct, simple and yet executed in a very original way. We agreed that it was probably the strongest piece in the show.

To get an idea of the kind of thing I'm talking about with the poses and weight sharing:


http://www.pilobolus.com/GRAPHICS/splash.jpg

Next was intermission, where I went outside and eased myself of considerable gas built up from those gravy fries.

After intermission was a short piece that was basically contact improv between five or so characters, built up and choreographed into a dance piece. Again, this was a more theatrical and comedic bit, featuring dancers in a sort of beach garb encountering one another as they crossed the stage. It was good but odd when contrasted with the much more stark and somber pieces in the show. I think this was supposed to be a sort of Pilobolus retrospective but it was a bit odd.

The last piece was "Day Two," choreographed by Moses Pendleton in 1980 and set to music by Brian Eno, David Byrne and the Talking Heads. The piece is again performed by two women and four men, all clothed only in a sort of thong to cover the genitals. It was a very primal piece, starting off with less of the partnering and weight sharing and more dancing in unison or pairs. It progresses into the familiar carrying and contortions between dancers, with women being carried on long poles by the men, difficult lifts between two dancers, etc. It gives off a sort of historical or evolutionary theme as the tone changes and the movements go from simple and solo to complex and paired. I'm not much of a dance critic but that's the best I can do to describe it. The piece was great and the music was very good.

The curtain call is done in an amusing way, with the dancers (still near nude) sliding across a stage flooded with water over a rubbery tarp.

We had a great time. Ms. Thumb and I agreed that the only weakness was the incongruity of the serious pieces with the older ones that were more comedic and theatrical. The music was great in all of them, with stuff by Kronos Quartet and also a composer that has done several collaborations with them whose name escapes me. If you have a chance to catch this company, or the offshoots Pilobolus TOO or Momix, I highly recommend it.

NT

TheBlueMonster
10-23-2005, 06:48 PM
I saw Pilobolus at the Kennedy Center a few years ago and I was quite impressed.