Dance Department Helps Preserve Pilobolus Masterwork Alraune

While many performers are trying constantly to discover a new or groundbreaking element of their particular art, the Division of Dance at the Meadows School of the Arts is working to preserve a unique style of modern dance. The Division of Dance is conducting a documentation and performance project for the dance Alraune by the American dance company Pilobolus. Alraune was presented in April at the Spring Dance Concert.

Alraune was choreographed in 1975, when Pilobolus was still a very young dance company. The piece was created by two of the founders of Pilobolus: Moses Pendleton and Alison Becker Chase.

Pilobolus (named after “a sun-loving fungus that grows in barnyards and pastures” – the founders “were fascinated with nature,” Meadows dance professor Patty Harrington Delaney said)is one of the most visible modern dance companies in the world, and was featured on 60 Minutes last February.

They created a “marriage of dance technique and athleticism that broadened our perspective of what dance could be,” Delaney said. The Pilobolus style is based on counter-balance and interaction of body weight, and the morphing of bodies and space, such as movement phrases in which several dancers are intertwined and move as a single unit.

“Pilobolus was founded at Dartmouth in 1971,” Delaney said. “Alison Becker, a recently graduated M.F.A. student from UCLA was teaching a class for non-majors at Dartmouth. Four of the dancers in her class – Moses Pendleton, Robby Barnett, Jonathan Wolken and Michael Tracy – were athletes, not dancers. They were swimmers, skiers. As Alison worked with them, she recognized their physical strength, and they began to experiment with alternative aspects of dance, such as weight exchange. Their final in this class was a dancework they entitled ‘Pilobolus.’ They toured this work as well as several new works and soon added two women to the group: Alison and Martha Clarke”

Alraune is one of Pilobolus’s signature works, and has been performed around the world since the 1970s. "It resonates with people everywhere," Delaney said. 

To preserve Alraune, Delaney is overseeing the documentation and presentation, which includes the creation of a Labanotation score. (Labanotation is a symbolic language system that functions in the same manner as spoken languages. It can be used to express movement verbally or to write it.) Delaney, one of only about two dozen certified notators in the world, is the leader of the project. SMU also will produce an interactive DVD that will provide a framework for a historical, cultural and aesthetic exploration of the dance.

The Labanotation score, Delaney said, is vital to the preservation of a piece like Alraune.

“The job of the notater,” Delaney said, “is to help get to the wisdom of the original piece. When dance is passed down, it sometimes is watered down. Notation allows us to maintain the choreographic intent of the dance.”

This is the first time a Labanotation score will be done for a Pilobolus work. Alison Becker Chase was in Dallas in February to work with Meadows dancers, as were Matt and Emily Kent, both of whom dance with Pilobolus II. The Kents had multiple roles on their visit, coaching Meadows student dancers while training with Chase.

The athletic nature of the Pilobolus style separates Alraune from most of the more traditional dance pieces often performed at Meadows. The project will have a lasting impact, as the Labanotation score and the educational DVD – complete with interviews with the choreographers, the costume designer, the composer, the lighting designer and several generations of dancers – will be preserved in the Library of Congress. In August, SMU dancers will travel to Maine to perform a new work by Chase.