Dance: Fungus, Fantasy and Fun

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Dancers of classical ballet disguise their great strength and athleticism with infinite refinements of grace. The Piloboli are utterly different; they glory, women and men, in chunks of muscle and spasms of energy, and their grace, like their abundant humor, is the careless result of motion. A body hurtles headfirst through the air, strikes another body—clay thrown at clay—and somehow sticks there, funny and graceful. Music is not danced to, but danced in, as space is danced in. Stories are not acted out, and when an arrangement of figures begins to suggest some coherent narrative line, the apparition melts and reforms.

The dreamlike dance called Untitled is as explicit as Pilobolus numbers are allowed to be. In it the two women, dressed in long, full gowns, circulate gravely, as if at a garden party, then abruptly and astonishingly gain 3 ft. in height. Their long skirts are now knee-length dresses, and the knees are those of two bare-legged men, on whose shoulders they ride. The two huge women dance a flirtation with the two remaining men, who wear top hats and frock coats. The dream then shifts unaccountably, and the women settle back to normal height, giving violent birth to the two naked men who have been carrying them. The mood of the onlooker is simple wonder.

Performances of this kind are exhausting and so is the process of Pilobolesque creation, which is generally a free-for-all heckling session. The troupe's humor remains, but more often now a serious mood is noticeable. Composers are collaborating more actively in the evolution of new dance pieces. Pilobolus is beginning to be imitated, but Wolken doesn't think that the troupe has created a mainstream dance movement. No one really knows. In the meantime, "we're still finding moments we haven't seen before," he says, thinking it over. "Movement's pretty good stuff."

John Skow