Dance preview: Pilobolus' ‘Rushes’

The breaking point came with a leap into a lift, Robby Barnett recollected.

Several Pilobolus veterans had assembled to initiate Israeli choreographers Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak into the modern dance company’s collaborative process. Over and over, Pinto had one dancer fly into another’s arms, making subtle adjustments each time.

Strenuous repetition is part of any Pilobolus work day, but the dancers couldn’t understand why Pinto homed in on a single move’s excruciating details, when the arc of the piece wasn’t yet clear.

One of those dancers, Atlanta’s Matt Kent, recalled that the group slipped into its usual mode of choreographing by consensus rather than following Pinto’s directions. The atmosphere must have seemed chaotic to an outsider, he said. Frustrated, Pinto left the room on the verge of tears.

It was clear that the Pilobolus veterans and the Israeli pair were working under different assumptions, Barnett said in a recent phone interview from the company’s home base in rural Connecticut. But the resulting work, “Rushes,” one of five pieces Pilobolus will perform on a mixed program Thursday at the Ferst Center for the Arts, takes Pilobolus’ imaginative brand of weight-sharing and sculptural shape-shifting into another dimension.

Los Angeles Times critic Charles McNulty described the darkly humorous “Rushes” as “a Fellini-esque carnival enlivened by floating mimes and a circle of scrambling chairs, all of which is propelled into motion for a stretch by Miles Davis jazz.” At one point, two men in black suits scuttle across the circle, then clump together as a third man jumps onto their thighs, gesturing as if he’s about to speak. Frozen in that position, the others flip him over their heads and upside down, back-bending over one another like turning gears, forming images of a swinging pendulum and a clock face ticking away time.

Since Pilobolus’ beginning in 1971, the company’s dance-making method hasn’t changed much, though new generations of dancers have stepped in. Moving as a group from a shared center of gravity, dancers exchange support, entwining limbs, heads and torsos into complex partnering configurations, unfolding through myriad shapes to create mind-bending images. The process changed in 1999 when the troupe first collaborated with author/illustrator Maurice Sendak in “A Selection.”

In 2007, as directors mapped out the organization’s long-term plans, they wanted to reinforce the idea of collaboration as a core value.

This led to the International Collaborators Project, a series of experiments to find out how other artists worked and to see what they would do with Pilobolus’ uniquely skilled dancers. On American Dance Festival director Charles Reinhart’s recommendation, Pinto and Pollak were the first choreographers Pilobolus invited in.

“They were already themselves collaborators, so the idea of exchanging ideas in the compositional process didn’t bother them,” Barnett said.

“We found to our amazement that although we thought we knew how dances were made, we didn’t know everything.”

Generally, Pilobolus dancers will “workshop” material for an initial two-week period, improvising until physical material emerges, Barnett said. “As we look at it, assess it, turn it around in our heads, and our bodies, ideas emerge, connections are made, stories appear, relationships reveal themselves. We’re building detail in as we understand more what the shape of our piece is.”

In “Rushes,” Barnett said, Pinto and Pollak would begin with five to 10 seconds of choreography. “They would work this until it had a high polish and that it reflected in a way some idea in microcosm. ... Their approach was to assemble a work from a single spot outward in some sort of crystal process. It simply was eye-opening for us. I think our approach was eye-opening for them. And together we found a common ground in ‘Rushes.’ ”

“Rushes” is just one facet of the varied program. Teaming with “SpongeBob SquarePants” writer Steven Banks, Matt Kent helped create “Dog.id,” part of “Shadowland.” The evening-length narrative work uses light and body configurations to cast fantastical shadow images onto a screen, similar to Pilobolus’ nationally televised car commercial and their appearances on 2007 Academy Awards. Also featured are the new, fast-paced duet “Hitched”; “Redline,” an energized look at physical battle; and “Day Two,” the classic 1981 work that envisions how Earth’s earliest life forms evolved into the first creatures to take flight.

Cynthia Bond Perry is dance critic at ArtsCriticATL.com .

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Pilobolus