Symbiosis: Merging Science and Art through Dance

2 Comments by Alexander Phillips on 25th Jul 10

This performance by two dancers from the unique dance company known as Pilobulus is aptly named “Symbiosis”. It is delicate, hauntingly beautiful and perfectly choreographed. The performance ebbs and flows, as the male and female form shift between crustacean-like introversion and erect outwards expression. To a backdrop of gentle and sometimes jarring music (“God Music,” George Crumb; “Fratres,” Arvo Part; “Morango…Almost a Tango,” Thomas Oboe Lee), the pair create empty space then fill it with organic visual imagery, evoking audience anticipation and matching it with surprise and delight. It is rare to see the human body used so eloquently to stimulate the brain. Does it trace the co-evolution of a symbiotic species, the sexual act, a ritual between friends or lovers?

Pilobolus began as an experiment among three guys and one puzzled professor in a Dartmouth dance class back in 1970. It was survival of the giddiest, as the three non-dancers goofed around with the material they’d been given — themselves — and got entangled in science-inspired poses (think: “soft-belly protoplasmic thing”) and movements. From these humble, biological beginnings has emerged an innovative, unlikely and almost-uncategorizable dance company that combines athleticism, grace and humor with a profound sense of unity.