Pilobolus brings thrilling dance to Wisconsin Union Theater

Pilobolus, a “nifty and sophisticated dance company” with “complex and brilliant choreography,” according to the New York Times, performs in the Wisconsin Union Theater on Wednesday, Feb. 23, at 8 pm.

Pilobolus is a sun-loving fungus that grows in barnyards and pastures and throws its spores nearly eight feet high – and it’s also a highly unusual dance company. Established in Dartmouth College 33 years ago, the group was immediately acclaimed for its startling mix of humor and invention, and noted for its unusual physical vocabularies and collaborative structure. The band, which has received numerous prestigious honors and awards, has collaborated with many other organizations and worked with artists as diverse as the National Theater of the Deaf, the English Baroque Soloists, ice skater Brian Boitano, the Rockettes and Walking Thunder, a Navajo medicine woman.

“Pilobolus specializes in striking, often disturbing images,” says the Pittsburg Tribune-Review. “The dancers will their bodies into shapes that seem impossible outside a cartoon. One moment they cluster into a many-armed Hindu god. The next they become a Ferris wheel, followed by couples or trios that suggest an archer’s bow or the illuminated capital letters in a Medieval manuscript.”

The Los Angeles Times, calling Pilobolus “absolutely thrilling,” raves about the band’s “astonishing feats of virtuosic balance and endurance,” while the New York Post deliriously describes “the intertwining bodies, the sculptural movements, the weight and balance of acrobatic adagio, and the sheer athleticism.”

The show is sponsored by the Wisconsin Union Directorate Theater Committee with additional support from WORT, 89.9 FM. Tickets start at $18; tickets for students are $10. For more information, call the box office at (608) 262-2201.