PILOBOLUS - Shadowland

SHADOWLAND, the groundbreaking new performance by internationally acclaimed dance troupe Pilobolus, is best described as part shadow act, part dance, part circus and part concert.
Pilobolus, As the first theatrical event of its kind to tour the globe, Shadowland incorporates multiple moving screens of different sizes and shapes to create an evening-length performance that merges projected images and front-of-screen choreography. The story is a surreal experience of a young girl’s sensational world as she comes of age. Created in collaboration with lead writer for the popular animated series SpongeBob SquarePants Steven Banks, Shadowland is a universal and intimately portrayed experience that is both intensely dramatic and comedic.
It is set to a rhythmic original score by the popular American musician, producer, and
film composer David Poe, whose poetic work for Shadowland ranges from ballads to hard-driving rock numbers that lift the audience out of its seats. His much-loved songs illuminate the themes and visuals of this fascinating story and world.

ORIGINS
Shadowland was conceived and created by Pilobolus after several years of experimentation of the short shadow form. The result is a mixture of Pilobolus’ signature style and innovative new forays into new media. Indeed, from an artistic standpoint, the new work incorporates Pilobolus’ legendary approach to modern dance combined with high-energy, fast-paced, multi-media innovation.
Known for its collaborative choreographic process and a unique weight-sharing approach to partnering and sculptural creations, the company discovered this new medium for playing with lightness and dark when it developed advertisements for Hyundai and then performed at the 79th Annual Academy Awards in 2007, creating iconic images of the films nominated for Best Picture.

The story of Shadowland,
Night. A small house on a small street. A teenage girl prepares for bed. She longs for independence, but to her parents she is still a little girl. With nowhere for her thoughts to go but into her dreams, she falls asleep only to wake to something lurking behind her bedroom wall — her shadow.
The wall of her room suddenly starts to spin, trapping her on the other side. Unable
to escape, the girl sets off on a journey of discovery, going deeper and deeper into
Shadowland, looking for a way out. Strange creatures appear along the way — at once comic and evil, threatening and seductive — crazy chefs try to cook her in a soup, hunch-hand monsters threaten to crush her, a giant hand turns her into a dog, and a centaur finds a way into our dog-girl’s heart.
With the fluid logic of a dream, the grace of an acrobatic dance, the humor of the
best cartoon, and the heart of a love story, Shadowland celebrates the strange transformative power of the dark to show us who we are in unexpected and thrilling ways.

“A completely new show, Shadowland will become, without doubt, one of the more important theater events of the new season.”
—Absolute Madrid

“Watching Shadowland makes you speechless… They have given us something beautiful, touching and completely unexpected”
—Stuttgarter Zeitung

“From good-old shadow play, they have made a mega-event on a large screen which has fascinated the world”
—     BILD Berlin/Brandenburg

“This show mixes elements of vaudville and theater, acrobatics and dance, poetry and pop into a gorgeous work of art.”
—     Berliner Morgenpost

“Since its early years, the purest Pilobolus experiences have involved metamorphosis. We see both physicality and illusion. Bodies become imagery, and one imae merges into another, poetically, inexplicably.”
—     Alistair MacCaulay, The New York Times

Human bodies fuse to become figures
The basic principle is easy to understand: Behind screens and in front of spotlights, human bodies fuse to become monstrous heads, elephants, hilly beaches, or mythical creatures. In this world of silhouettes, there’s only black and white (or black and orange, black and green, and so on). Naturally, there’s good and bad too: a knife-rattling horde of chefs gone wild, chasing the girl to be cooked in their giant pot which has already absorbed a light bulb and a telephone. A nightmare.
The girl is personified by dancer Molly Gawler, who – when not on tour – takes care of her small kitchen garden in Marlboro, Vermont, USA. Although Molly Gawler is unbelievably good at bowing her head to the crook of her arm behind the screen, the girl’s nightmare gets worse on the screen. She grows a dog’s muzzle and dog’s ears, and becomes a dog-girl via the elbow-trick, and is mocked by the other shadow creatures at first, then hunted down and in the end brutally shamed.
With captivatingly beautiful images, the dancers tell a frightening tale of alienation and rejection, of the quest for home, and the brutality of the seemingly normal: Marvelous how the innocent dog-girl slobbers the mean spirited cowboy’s drink in his truck… Splended as the the passing twigs suggest movement out the
window. Striking, without cheap showmanship, virtuous but never vain, detailed but never boring, Pilobolus uses all possible sorts of communication except language to tell a tale of loneliness and its overcoming. In the end, the dog-girl meets a centaur, a composite being of man and horse.

“Shadowland” is a fabulous mélange
The show “Shadowland” is a fabulous composite being itself, in which nightmarish sequences and opulent daydreams melt into a magnificent mélange. The shadows on the screens are only part of the orchestration.
Because they alternate motion, back and forth. And sometimes, a few of the nine body-actors step in front of the screen and enact something which would be called dance, if it wasn’t miles off from what has been seen yet. There are women sliding into dresses and steps turning to colors. And everything seems quite natural, so very natural like the hand-animated crab on the screen that plops into the mouth of the dog-girl.
There are no words to describe “Shadowland”. You must watch “Shadowland”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjr6M2hoA1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHJuRSlXvCM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPERVDVHAr4