Pilobolus

Late last night I chanced upon a NHK docummentary on the dance company Pilobolus. It was an absolute delight in seeing the off-stage life of my favorite dance group (I also like Taiwan-based Cloud Gate Dance Theater雲門舞集). The beauty and power of modern dance are rooted in its effort to break tradition. It is beyond artisitic beauty and gestural skills. Watching Pilobolus, we don't know what to expect. As the director of the company said himself, their dance is hard to describe. Complex yet beautifully simple. Each dancer moves spherically rather than vertically in a "weight-sharing approach to partnering." We see dancers literally climbing on each other and clinging to each other's support. Each member uses partial body to explore space individually and forces the rest to embrace the flesh of other members. No one is an island, not even someone as free as a dancer. An image or message far beyond art and beauty.

I saw a Pilobolus performance about 15 years ago. At the American Dance Festival held on the Duke University campus, I came to know about this incredible dance company. They delivered a performance that moved me like no other dance event before or since, until I saw "Nirvana" by Cloud Gate Dance Theater few years later.

Unfortunately, I missed Pilobolus and the Dance Festival while visiting Durham this summer. Maybe one day I will meet them again somewhere. Next month, I will see a Martha Graham Dance Company performance here in Iowa City. No matter how that will turn out, it will be an unusually chance to remind me that one's body is the foremost important medium that connects one to the world. This medium is different from objects. We don't own it like we own cell phones or iPods. Dancing is one way to make us realize that we don't possess our body. We simply ARE our body.