Pilobolus is an American modern dance company and they take their name from a backyard fungus which constantly changes its shape. I first saw them in the late 1970’s and much enjoyed their work and skill. Shadowland, which is being performed in the UK for the first time, is part shadow act, part dance, part circus and part concert.
The wordless, cartoonish, 90-minute performance relies on a series of projected images on multiple moving screens. A teenage girl dreams she is a dog and meets a number of people and strange creatures, including a giant, an elephant and a centaur. The story-line is poor. The appeal is what the company does and the sculptural shapes they achieve singly and as a group. Everything they create – cacti, worms, taxis, planes, castles, even the landscape – is done with just the torsos and limbs of twelve acrobatic dancers, which cleverly arranged are silhouetted.
The visuals are often striking. The high spot is the curtain call which reprises many of the images we have seen at speed and shows how they were achieved. The coordination is amazing; and so, too, is the sheer number of dancers involved in producing any one sculptural shape. Shadowland could well be a good choice for the whole family.