Pilobolus: I watched it

It seems to me, that when I've heard of or read about Pilobolus, it was often described as a dance border or bookend. As in, "From the height of classical dancing, like the Kirov ballet, to groups that straddle the boundary between acrobatics and dance like Pilobolus..." or, "whether your thing is funky hip hop dancing or way out there modern stuff like Pilobolus..." By the way, it's not that way out there, Mom and Dad both liked it.

I'm happy to see it at all, and especially happy to see it while the creators are still the artistic directors. So Jonathan Wolken who was one of the choreographers, and probably original dancers of Ocellus, which I saw tonight, was able to tell the dancers who performed it tonight what it is.

Day Two was the closing piece--the music was partially by David Byrne and the Talking Heads, which made me think that he must have liked working with dancers, since he also wrote music for Tharp's Catherine Wheel. I made other comparisons in my head. This music was much more listen-toable, and the dance was more accessible for me. Catherine Wheel was very dark, and while parts of it approached plot, I have a very foggy recollection of it. One of the things Tharp experimented with was a wire-form animated dancer--a computer generated thing with a lot of precision and no grace.

One part of Day Two began with just the four men kneeling in a row. They did a sequence of bows, brought praying to mind. One man does this move first, on his own: he falls forward onto his finger tips and stops absolutely still--more stable than the most perfect tripod ever was--and this links back to the Catherine Wheel because it made me think about one of the things I really love about watching dance--it chases the limits of human physical ability and shows that at our best, we're better than the best machines and devices. It's true in more mundane movements too: the best human welder at his best is better than the best robot welder ever could be. (I choose to believe)

Pilobolus shows our bodies as perfect levers and platforms and wheels and counterweights. And pretty excellent planes and fish and birds for that matter.
The things they did with girls hanging on sticks are so cool, I'm suprised I haven't seen it everywhere (Missy Elliot videos, ABDC, SYTYCD, so on).

...they were all like, "Here, stand on my feet while I lie on my back and stick my legs way up into the air." "Why, thank you. Don't mind if I do. And afterward, would you mind carrying me wrapped up like a scarf around your neck?" "No problem at all! So long as we can walk on chairs that other people are sliding around." "Of course! That's understood."