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| © Ian Douglas, courtesy of Pilobolus |
The first time I ever saw the dance company
Pilobolus was at the Wisconsin Union Theater, way back near the beginning – it
was 1975, and the company was in its fourth year. “Pilobolus,” biologically speaking, is a
genus of fungi that grow on, well, cow poop – perhaps an odd name for a dance
troupe, but I clearly remember thinking that Pilobolus was the best thing I’d
ever seen. I’d taken some classes with
multimedia modern dance master Alwin Nikolais, and I was astounded at the way
Pilobolus used the very Nikolaisian concept of a group of dancers as a single
living organism. But Pilobolus’ version was better – a new, pure form of modern
dance with startling agility, blessedly free from the trappings of sets and costumes. I’ve seen Pilobolus various times since, though
it never again captured my imagination the way it did that first time. That said, I haven’t seen Shadowland, a multimedia dance theater
piece that premiered in 2009 (in collaboration with Steven Banks, lead
writer for the clever animated TV show Spongebob
Squarepants, and singer-songwriter / film composer David Poe). Shadowland,
an international hit, comes to the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Shannon Hall on
Feb. 23.
Pilobolus has won its share of
awards, and also done its share of TV commercials – in fact, Shadowland evolved from a Hyundai ad done
as shadow play. Today Shadowland,
which toured Europe for nearly a decade before coming home to play in the
states, has a sequel – Shadowland 2: The
New Adventure, which premiered recently in Germany. All of this seemed too slick for my bohemian,
anticapitalist taste – and yet, after watching a dozen or so YouTube extracts
I’m pretty much prepared to fall in love with this narrative, full-length dance theater
piece, with its central character, Dog Girl – a girl who’s transformed partly
into a puppy. So, OK, I’ll admit it –
the shadow dance pup looks a lot like the goofy little terrier genius who
lives with me and owns my heart.
I also got to talk to Shadowland creative director Mark Fucik about
the show a couple of weeks ago. Fucik –
personable and enthusiastic on the phone – let me in on some of what goes on
behind this incredibly complex show. After that conversation, I’m even more excited
to see it.
CulturalOyster:
You have a long history with the company – how did you first come to Pilobolus,
and what’s changed since you started?
Fucik: I’ve been
with the company fifteen years. I kind
of fell into it. I started dancing late
– I was a theater major in college, at Rutgers, and I took some dance classes. I met a visiting alum who was working with
Pilobolus – she’d never seen me dance, but she said I should audition for the
company. When I saw what they did it
blew me away – the amalgamation of theater with dance, and how you can tell
such an incredible story with movement.
The
company’s always worked as a collective, but one thing that’s changed since I
came is that we’re now bringing in more collaborators, and not just dance
people – magicians and writers and musicians as well as outside choreographers. We like to bring people in to see what we can
innovate with their input.
CulturalOyster:
You’re listed as the creative director for Shadowland. How does that work? Since Pilobolus is organized as a collective,
did everyone have a hand in the choreography?
Fucik: Yeah – our
work is always made through collaborative effort. I’m the creative director of Shadowland now, which means I’m in
charge of multiple tours and making sure every one is up to par – theater
spaces are all different, so when things arrive on the road I
troubleshoot. I move things around to
solve problems. But I was one of the
dancers in the original cast. The vision
was pushed forward in 2008 by one of the company’s founders, Robbie Barnett
[now its charter artistic director], in collaboration with Steven Banks and
David Poe and the dancers in that first group.
Poe was there in the studio, writing music as we danced. We’d watch videos of what we did and he’d
create music for the movement. The work
comes from all of us, through improvisation.
CulturalOyster:
Your dancers are very athletic, and very contemporary – what kind of training
do you do as a company?
Fucik: One of the
things that’s great about Pilobolus is that it was started by four guys without
a dance background, which is why what we do reaches all audiences. Our dancers come from all over – we look for
people with great body awareness, for people who are intuitive. Sometimes they’re
modern dancers, or martial arts practitioners, or sometimes they’re just just
good movers who work with us and eventually get into the company.
Nothing can prepare you for what
Pilobolus asks you to do. We don’t do any particular technique – all of our
training comes during the work, from rehearsing our pieces. We rehearse 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, and
if we’re not rehearsing a piece, we’re improvising. You’re using your body the whole time,
finding out how it moves with other people and through space.
CulturalOyster:
From the videos I’ve seen of Shadowland
it’s clear that Pilobolus’ original,
organic concept is still there, though the contexts of the choreography, at
least in this case, are much more narrative, far less abstract. On the heels of Shadowland’s great success, there’s a sequel – so in general, is the
company moving away from repertory works and toward story productions?
Fucik: Not really.
Shadow was one thing we wanted to explore, and Shadowland 2 came about because we figured we were having success so
lets make another one. But we’re still making pure, simple dance pieces. We did a trio a couple of years ago, “On the
Nature of Things,” that goes back to the basic roots of Pilobolus, the
connection with other human beings – creating an organism and moving through
space. That’s always awed me about the
company; it’s sacred, and we always come back to it. Right now we’re in the swing of getting back
to that – getting the company to think outside the box about what these human
sculptures are and what they lead us to think and feel.
CulturalOyster:
Getting back to Shadowland, rear
projecting behind a scrim to make shadows is ancient technology, but making it
work for a production like Shadowland involves
all sorts of manipulations and movements that are different from dance, per se.
What kind of knowledge or training –
besides movement skills – do your dancers need to do this kind of work?
Fucik: Everyone in
Shadowland ends up learning new
skills. There’s a huge learning curve
when you first get in front of the projector and start making shadows. It’s not a straight trajectory – you have to
learn to move in a way that reads as a two-dimensional image. When I step into this light, what does it
read like on screen? What happens when
we stack our bodies vertically, or horizontally? What’s in the space between the projector and
the screen? Will this read as the head
of a seahorse, or a lion? You may work
with someone 25 feet away to make one shadow onscreen. One contorted body makes a weird shape by
itself, but with other bodies it makes an elephant, or a horse. You can’t prepare for that, you have to learn
it on the job. It takes a lot more than
putting your hands together to form a bird.
CulturalOyster: What
about your technical approach to shadow – this isn’t lantern-lit Balinese shadow
puppetry!
Fucik: What we do is an amalgamation of modern dance
and live shadowmaking. Our take on
shadows is that the way we roll into them and make composite, moving images, is
the technique’s beauty. It’s not always
the end shape that’s most important, it’s how you get from one point to
another. That’s the dancing – that’s
what makes it mysterious and keeps people engaged and excited.
But when we started making the
piece we realized that just watching shadow all the time can get boring. So we said let’s do what we do – let’s do
some modern dance. So it’s not just
dancing behind the screen with a single light source. Sometimes the dancers are behind the screen
and then it’s rolled back and they’re using handheld screens or partial
screens. There are parts done mostly in
front of the screen, with stage lighting, but other times the dancers are in
charge of light as well as shadow – we use flashlights a lot. We call the dancers shadowcasters.
CulturalOyster: Where
does the Shadowland story come from?
Fucik: It found
itself, through hours and hours of improv and seeing what we could do with
shadow. It became apparent that the
shadows were two dimensional, like cartoons, so we looked at Japanese anime and
then it hit us that we were telling a coming of age story, sort of like Alice in Wonderland, with a lesson to be
learned. And Steve Banks is a master
storyteller – he came in and helped us find where the story went. It turned out to be about a girl who is
finding out who she is as a person; she has to go through “Shadowland” to find
out what’s important to her.
CulturalOyster: Lots
of contemporary performing troupes are using the ancient Asian artform of
shadow theater – maybe most famously Julie Taymor incorporated it into Lion King, but the company Momix, a
Pilobolus offshoot, does it too. There’s obviously a mysterious power in using
shadows to tell a story, but because of that power the shadow approach has a
lot of commercial appeal, which Pilobolus famously exploits. In fact your use of shadow got its start as a
Hyundai commercial, right?
Fucik: Yes – we
used our bodies to make a car in silhouette.
CulturalOyster: So
I have to wonder – the original Pilobolus was so un-commercial in its approach
– how does the overlap between high art and high capitalism impact the
organization?
Fucik: We were
approached to do the car commercial, and it was a challenge. The company said hey, you guys have always
been great at taking the human form and creating sculptures – so we made a car,
and then we tried to push our thinking on what we can do with our bodies in
terms of shadowcasting.
And as every dance company will
tell you, we’re all trying to make money to stay alive, especially with what
we’re looking at for the next four years!
Endowments will be cut – we’re trying to stay afloat. Doing commercials allows us to make the art
we want to make. Every dancer, every
actor in New York can tell you you have to take the job that makes you money to
do the works you want to do.
But whether we’re doing TV ads or a theater
piece, Pilobolus is incredibly accessible.
The movement we do comes from everyday life, we find it in improvisation
with each other – and we keep that spirit of not trying to be so serious about
our art that people leave the theater and say they didn’t get what they just
saw. So we reach a lot of people, which
is great.
CulturalOyster: I’m
blown away by what I’ve seen online of Dog Girl – there’s something so touching
about it, and she looks so doggy –
she can get that shadow to do just what my own dog does. Is there just one dancer – according to your
website, Heather Jean Favretto – who always does this role? I get the sense that she’s totally into the
story while she’s doing it. Is she a dog
person in real life?
Fucik: She didn’t
originate the role, she’s the third generation of Dog Girl. In fact, now we have two Dog Girls, though in
Madison it’ll be Heather who does it. It
can be taught, but it takes a lot of practice and attention to detail – the way
the dancers make the dog head and sustain it – it’s a lot of hard work.
CulturalOyster: Is
Favretto a dog person in real life?
Fucik: She doesn’t
own a dog! She likes dogs, but you can’t
have one if you’re always touring. But
like any good theater person you study a role, and if you’re Dog Girl you study
little dogs.
CulturalOyster: Is
it true or just a rumor that Shadowland
ends with a coda that reflects each city the show goes to? That’s a lot of extra work – how many cities,
in total, has it played in? Will you do
something unique for Madison?
Fucik: Yes – for
every city we take the time to craft a special thank you in our finale, so if
you were to see us in one city and then in another you wouldn’t see the exact
same ending you saw before. We think
it’s something audiences enjoy, and we enjoy doing it for them.
As for the number of cities – the
show opened in 2009 and now it’s 2017 – it’s been many, many cities and
countries. This is its first big US
tour! It’s traveled mostly outside the
States – we did Germany, Australia, Asia, the Middle East – all before the
States.
CulturalOyster: Is
there anything I didn’t ask you that you want my readers to know?
Fucik: Just come
open to experience anything – with Pilobolus you never know what you’re going
to get. We go from funny to serious to
heartbreaking in a heartbeat. Come ready
to engage yourself.
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interview by SK
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