The spirit of Pilobolus Dance Theater is not the spirit of modern dance … exactly. Trying to describe a performance by the Pilobolus Dance Theater is a lot like trying to describe the flavor of an Orange Julius fountain drink.
"It's orange, and its … ummm (silence)."
The late Jonathan Wolken, one of the company's founding members at Dartmouth College back in 1971, said the choreography "is an amalgam of dance and theater … a great, vast landscape of all the movement possibility that there is with the human body."
The New York Times more succinctly called it "dancers joined together as if in biological symbiosis."
Of course Pilobolus has been a Tucson favorite from the very beginning. According to online data, the company first performed at the University of Arizona in 1972.
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Just in this century, Pilobolus has given campus concerts at Centennial Hall in 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2009. The 2001 performance was the world premiere of a full-length work with 19 variations inspired by the Arizona desert, "Opus Cactus."
This genre-defying dance company will return to Centennial Hall on Sunday. The program is drawn from the last 20 years of its 40-year history of creating pieces filled with original movement and physical prowess that continues to defy dance terminology.
"Our method for creating things is unique, and we've proved our method does work," said Robby Barnett, another of the founding dancers and one of two artistic directors.
This method is dedicated to collaboration, a choreographic process that adds improvisation to a deliberate fusion of dance with athletics, science and the body.
Barnett calls it "playing," which, if you watch any of the Pilobolus video clips on YouTube, sounds about right. That is, if you are thinking of the players as intensely physical athletes who are incredibly imaginative. And fearless. And apparently able to defy some very basic laws of physics.
"The dancers develop material from their own bodies, so they know it is possible," said Barnett, on the phone from the company's studio in rural Connecticut. He made it sound so simple.
"The company has always been seven dancers and every year we have about 200 women and 60 men who audition," he added.
The present lineup has four men and three women, although Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern suffered an injury recently and won't be making the swing through Tucson.
The program here will begin with "Gnomen" (1997), set on four dancers performing choreography similar to work the company was doing in its early years.
Today's artistry is represented by "Korokoro" (2011), a collaboration with Japanese Butoh artist Takuya Muramatsu of Dairakudakan, which premiered earlier this year. The Newark Star Ledger described "Korokoro" as a "dance that exposes the body in twisted shapes, defying conventional notions of beauty and permitting repressed emotions to surface as the dancers stare-down the audience."
Also on the program is an excerpt from "The Transformation," one of those shadow pieces which Barnett calls "playing with light and holes." Thanks to appearances on national television in recent years, these two-dimensional images are now indelibly associated with Pilobolus.
If you go
• What: Pilobolus Dance Theatre in concert.
• Presented by: UApresents
• When: 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
• Where: Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. on the University of Arizona campus.
• Tickets: $20- $42, with discounts available. Ticket prices do not include a $4 per ticket operating fee.
• Information/reservations: 621-3341 or online at www.uapresents.org
Chuck Graham has written about Tucson arts for more than 36 years. Read more of his articles at "Let the Show Begin," www.tucsonstage.com
