Pilobolus (dance company)
Pilobolus has performed over 100 choreographic works in more than 64 countries around the world, and has been featured on the 79th Annual Academy Awards, The Oprah Winfrey Show and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
The four remaining founders (Barnett, Chase, Tracy, and Wolken) continued as artistic directors, choreographing collectively and in various combinations in collaboration with new dancers brought into the company in subsequent years.
Their act was performed in silhouette behind a white translucent screen, where they formed various figures at intervals during the show: first, the Oscar statue itself; then logos (or scenes) from various films: Happy Feet, Little Miss Sunshine, Snakes on a Plane, The Devil Wears Prada, and The Departed.
[citation needed] Following the company's appearance on the 79th Academy Awards, Pilobolus's signature shapes and shadow work were featured in 2008 on the 39th Season of Sesame Street, as well as on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Oprah Winfrey.
In 2007, Pilobolus established the International Collaborators Project (ICP), in which the dance company teams up with visiting artists annually to expand its unique collective choreographic process.
[11] Other ICP collaborators include musical duo Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn; writer and illustrator, Maurice Sendak; the puppeteer, Basil Twist; Pulitzer Prize-winner, comic artist Art Spiegelman; the Grammy-winning American composer and musician Dan Zanes; singer/composer David Poe; SpongeBob SquarePants head writer Steven Banks; the Grammy-winning band OK Go; the MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory directed by Daniela Rus; the Japanese butoh choreographer Takuya Muramatsu of the troupe Dairakudakan; WNYC's Radiolab with hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich; the MacArthur “Genius” Award-winning juggler Michael Moschen; the Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui; award-winning director and choreographer, Trish Sie; master illusionists Penn & Teller; Israeli authors and filmmakers Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen; and multiplatinum songwriter/composer Alex Dezen[12] Pilobolus classes and workshops use the art of collaborative choreography as a model for creative thinking in general.
PCS has made television spots for Mobil, Ford, Toyota, Opel, Hyundai, Multicentrum, BBVA, Bidvest, and Procter & Gamble – including an Emmy-Nominated piece for the NFL Network – and created live events for IBM, McKinsey, United Technologies, Dupont, Merck, and Google.
PCS created and presented six acclaimed performances during the 79th Annual Academy Awards, and produced a series of original segments for the Oprah Winfrey Show and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
An introductory text to the 2008 calendar noted that the company had been “experimenting with still photography since the 1980s” to address the question “How can one select individual moments from a continuum and have them retain meaning?” The introduction also noted that the group's “choreographic inquiry is driven by a fascination with images” that are, or become, “the fundamental units of our physical vocabulary.” Rather than attempting to document their live performances, the calendar photo shoots represented "a sort of annual gallery of our evolving understanding of the relationship between choreographic and photographic expression.
Photographer Robert Whitman captured Pilobolus in a variety of colorful Israeli landscapes, including the Dead Sea, Old Jaffa, markets in Jerusalem, hot springs, and the streets of Haifa.
[citation needed] As of 2024, the Pilobolus company is composed of Nathaniel Buchsbaum, Connor Chaparro, Marlon Feliz, Hannah Klinkman, Zachary Weiss and dance captain Quincy Ellis.
