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Jun 29, 2008
The house darkened at Page Auditorium, and the curtain came up on a dazzling white screen. Immediately shadows of figures appeared and began moving, climbing on each other and extending horizontally, settling finally into the letters, A D F. To thundering applause Pilobolus introduced the evening with a bow to the American Dance Festival, to their own popular television commercials and to the evening's finale, "Darkness and Light," a new commission in collaboration with puppeteer Basil Twist.
The word "puppeteer" conjures up small figures manipulated by human handlers, but this piece involved a different surrogate. Here, the puppets are shadows of human beings, not flat forms or three-dimensional dolls.
At the beginning of "Darkness," the audience sees the dancers and the lighting machinery, which are abruptly hidden behind a white screen that fills the entire stage. The screen becomes the canvas that holds the transitory images. Watery forms float across that screen, then animal-like silhouettes come into sharp focus only to blur and elongate into human figures and then change into something else.
On reflection, this could be a choreographed re-enactment of the story of creation. First there are amoeba and insects, then animals, then humans and finally a seated Buddha from whose arms it all begins. The storyline, however, is not that clear, and despite the fact that I am always looking for a literal meaning, getting too literal is anathema to dance.
Twist, who choreographed the work in collaboration with Robby Barnett, Jonathan Wolken and the dancers, is a master puppeteer. He grew up in a family of puppeteers and is the only American to have attended the three-year training program at France's Ecole Superieure National des Arts de la Marionnette. The art of puppetry is an old one and has always been a major form of adult theatre in Europe. In the United States, until very recently, it is seen mainly as children's entertainment. Today, because of Twist and a handful of other aficionados, we are seeing more and more puppets with adult themes on the American stage.
In this performance, Twist does not use the traditional puppet figure, but shadows and silhouettes, a version of silhouette animation which has its own influences in 18th century black cut-out silhouettes and Chinese shadow puppets. With his knowledge of the shadow/silhouette techniques, Twist moves into new territory and replaces the flat figures with human ones. As his watery world moves into one of black outlined forms, the Surrealists and their explorations of the subconscious immediately came to mind. Those artists of the 1920s produced visual objects using dream-like atmospheres of fantasy and accidental patterns that might come from a dropped blob of ink or mirror images cut from a folded piece of paper.
The choreographer's techniques have much in common with the experiments of the Surrealists and the Dadaists who preceded them. Twist could have been one of them. Rather than ancestor and disciple, they could have been siblings, especially if the technology that is available today had been available in the 1920s.
"Darkness and Light" was the last of five dances that were equally compelling. "Lanterna Magica," a new work, is a fantasy about the enchanting world of night, when fireflies and other imaginative forms dance through a dark dream. "Razor: Mirror," also a new work, visualized that infinitesimal space between madness, sanity and hope.
The evening had been billed as dark (not recommended for young children), and "Nocturne," originally created in 1979, is certainly that. The aged ballerina staggers haltingly as she tries to move to the lilting music. For one magical moment, it seems she will be able to conquer her infirmities, but the moment passes and she stumbles and collapses. The story is a haunting one and the old ballerina, still trying to be something that she is not, is a reminder that age is inevitable and cannot be denied.
For me, however, it was in "Symbiosis" that the agility and creativity of Pilobolus were at their very best. In a pas de deux the figures grow out of each other, rarely standing and always touching. They twist, entwine and seemingly turn themselves inside out. It is the creation of Adam and Eve and their discovery of each other and it is wondrous.
The troupes that make their way to Durham each year for the American Dance Festival are more and more part of a growing movement to cross disciplines and collaborate in the world of creativity. A leader in this thinking is Pilobolus, and "Darkness," is one of the finest examples. In it, dance, a fleeting art of the moment, partners with painting, an art of place. The result is a wonderful new genre with a title yet to be invented.
Blue Greenberg's column appears each week in The Arts. She can be reached at blueg@bellsouth.net or by writing her in c/o The Herald-Sun, P.O. Box 2092, Durham, NC 27702.
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