Pilobolus Has a Ball
Annual Event July 10
By: Ariel Petrova - Jun 22, 2010
It wouldn’t be summer in Litchfield County,Connecticut without the hottest party of the season heating up under the stars, this year on Saturday, July 10, on the great lawn at Quatre Vents in Washington. With Honorary Chairman Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter, who has donated two invitations to the 2011 Vanity Fair Oscar Party; and Pilobolus artistic collaborators Art Spiegelman and Dan Zanes, Pilobolus’ outdoor gala will be sowing the seeds of the company’s 40th anniversary in 2011.
The title for the anniversary season, which will have its soft launch at the Ball, is Pilobolus at 40: Collaborating on the Future.
This year’s gala for Connecticut’s preeminent arts organization and Litchfield County cultural gem is destined to be the most exciting yet. Renowned for its imagination and ingeniously intricate and athletic exploration of creative collaboration, Pilobolus will present two special sneak peak premieres, and will serve a mouth?watering dinner by the newly in business Kent based catering company The Millstone Bakery & Café.
“By all accounts, last year’s event was a smash success,” says Ball Chairman, Pilobolus Trustee, and owner of the Stationer and Depot Papetrie Matthew Lynn, “Not least because the sun shined for the first time in 40 days and nights and allowed us to have the party of the summer!”
Says Pilobolus Executive Director Itamar Kubovy, “At last year’s Ball, the Litchfield County Friends of Pilobolus significantly underwrote the creation of a major new dance, which is now about to premiere first at Dartmouth College and then in New York City. We did this through the amazing support of Pilobolus’ local community.” Funds from the Pilobolus Ball go to support the creation of new dances and Pilobolus’ educational programming, which serves people of all ages and backgrounds, including severely underserved communities. Pilobolus’ mission is to promote access to creativity, collaboration, and productivity in groups of all kinds.
Ball performances: VIP Premiere Performance: Hitched
A duet that elevates the complex partnering Pilobolus is known for to a new to level of intensity, Hitched traces the story of a couple from wedding to old age, exploring both the joys and the complications of human companionship through a series of raveled and unraveled physical knots. This new work, created by Jonathan Wolken, is fast paced, funny, physically impossible and ultimately moving.
After dinner
Premiere Performance: Contradance
Pilobolus' Matt Kent and Renee Jaworski have teamed up with Grammy Award winning family music man Dan Zanes to develop Contradance. A comic fable about two misfits, Contradance is illuminated by brand new songs that guide the company's unabashedly physical approach to story telling. Plus, slideshow images of Art Spiegelman’s original drawings from Pilobolus’ third world premiere of the season, “Hapless Hooligan in ‘Still Movin’”.
ABOUT PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATER
Pilobolus began in 1971, as an outsider dance company, and has evolved into a pioneering American arts organization of the 21st century. The company nowrevolves around three nuclei of activity: PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATER, the umbrella for a series of radically innovative and globally acclaimed concert dance companies; THE PILOBOLUS INSTITUTE, unique educational programming for schools, colleges, and public arts organizations as well as a series of classes and leadership workshops for corporate executives, employees, and business schools; and PILOBOLUS CREATIVE SERVICES, a division specializing in a wide range of movement services for film, advertising, publishing, commercial clients, and corporate events. The company is based in Washington Depot, Connecticut and performs for stage and television audiences all over the world. For more info, please visit www.Pilobolus.org.
ABOUT ART SPIEGELMAN
Art Spiegelman is co?ounder/editor of RAW, the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Maus, which was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Since 1992 he has been a staff artist and writer for The New Yorker, which published his powerful blackon black 9/11 cover a few days after the event. Breakdowns, the legendary 1978 collection of Spiegelman’s comics, presents the seminal works that changed how comics are made. His drawings and prints have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world. Spiegelman lives in New York City with his wife, Françoise Mouly, and their two children.
ABOUT DAN ZANES
Two things set Dan Zanes apart from the huge and festive field of individuals who, in the past few years, have begun making music for families and people of all ages. First, he is making homemade family music and encouraging his friends and neighbors to do the same; second, he is the guy who is always interested in singing along with people everywhere. His mission is to introduce his musical friends to his neighborhood friends and then show everybody not only that they can play together, but that they can feel pretty good while doing so. In this sense, Zanes is a twenty first century version of the guy, who in the old days, used to conduct the town band from the gazebo. Although in lieu of a gazebo, he plays places like Carnegie Hall and the Melbourne International Arts Festival. He is a ringmaster, introducing new songs and reconnecting people to ones that have always been around—it’s just that people forgot about them.
Two nights after the Ball, Pilobolus will open for its annual New York City season at the Joyce Theater in New York City. The company will perform according to the following schedule from July 12 – August 7: Monday – Wednesday at 7:30pm, Thursday and Friday at 8:00pm, and Saturday at 2:00pm and 8:00pm. Tickets for these performances start at $10, and can be arranged by calling JoyceCharge at 212 242 0800 or online at Joyce.org. NOTE: Ticket prices are subject to change.
The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street.