Pilobolus

Pilobolus performed at ADF July 9-11.

How many Pilobolus dancers does it take to turn on a light bulb? Many of the works by this athletic, inventive company open like the lead-in to a joke. What do you get when you cross two men, a woman, and a fish? Sometimes, the punch line is elusive, never quite clear. Other times, as in the case of the 1972 favorite “Walklyndon,” the dance is all punch line. Or rather, one punch line after another, as the seven dancers in yellow unitards and sport shorts collide, trip, trot past, and carry each other off in continuous, humorous crossings.

Two of the works Pilobolus presented on Saturday night, “2b” and “Rushes,” began like the opening of some absurd joke, setting us giggling. Soon, however, we began to realize that this was no joke—although we found ourselves still laughing, nervously this time—but rather a surreal dream, a story tinged with beautiful melancholy, a fragile, funny layer over something sad and dark. Both works were choreographed by Israeli choreographers Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak (and Robby Barnett for “Rushes”), with the collaboration of the dancers, and both seemed born out of the same strange, imaginary world.

“2b” introduced its characters through short vignettes: a man with his suit jacket buttoned high over his head lowered himself gingerly to the ground through a cloud of black balloons, bobbing as he tested the stability of the floor with his tiptoes; a fish (a man with a fish mask on his head) arduously pulled a small red door along the ground before flopping and flailing—yes, like a fish; a woman with red arms and legs tiptoe-shuffled to the school of balloons, popping every last one in her attempt to clutch them; a man in an orange jumpsuit squeezed himself out of the small door, sliding and contorting his body around and through the doorframe, limbs collapsing, betraying his control. These opening images were so fresh, so whimsical, so outside of my expectations. As the characters’ interactions became more and more convoluted, however, the dancers spent a long time—too long, I thought—with the sort of acrobatic pranks Pilobolus is known for. In this context, the movement felt disappointingly familiar. The dance wound down, back to a starker, more darkly funny end: with the two men and the woman piled in the small doorway, the fish triumphed, strutting back and forth, pelvis pitched far forward. He circled the line the first man dropped in on, finally grabbing it—caught, after all that? But no, the fish was not reeled in, but dangled, and seemed to smile. Perhaps that, after all, was the punch line.

“Rushes” began with almost circus-y, oompah-pah music that boomed out before the curtain opened. When the curtain rose to a dim stage and a circle of white chairs with grim, hunched figures, what followed was quite a bizarre carnival indeed. The setting looked like The Waiting Room from Hell—a train station, perhaps, where no one ever leaves and time ceases to have meaning. What else is there to do but rearrange the chairs, dream, and tell a few jokes now and then? As depressing as it sounds, the work was riveting, somehow both fantastical and touchingly human. Three of the men were the clowns, showing off, swinging from each other’s arms, clamoring up one another like tree trunks to turn on a bare light bulb suspended from above. Another man carried a suitcase, full of dreams, tonics, wonders, perhaps—when he opened the suitcase, the others were drawn forward, magnetically, until all their heads were sucked inside. In a Busby Berkley-style scene, the dancers maneuvered chairs into pinwheels, circles, diagonals, even a rising and falling carousel.

The two women were a mysterious pair; at first, they shifted surreptitiously around the circle, rearranging the chairs. Later, one was swept away by the clowns, skating and sliding across the floor. Beautiful and graceful, she was also completely passive, letting herself be pulled around as the men steered her arms or reached between her legs to pull her backwards. The other woman clutched the man with the suitcase desperately, pulled herself laboriously up to his shoulders. Like a tightrope walker, he stepped gingerly along a continuous train of chairs, as the three stooges slid them from the back of the line to the front in a lightning-fast relay. Finally, the man stopped walking and the woman on his shoulders reached one tentative hand upward and turned out the light.