Pilobolus is about to put every mildly impressive shadow puppet you ever made on your bedroom wall to shame. In their groundbreaking piece Shadowland, the renowned dance collective creates an enchanting world of incredible illusions with light, screens, simple props, and nine human bodies. The show made its highly anticipated North American premiere on Nov. 20 at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts and will continue its run there through Dec. 6.
Shadowland follows the story of a young girl’s dream as she explores many of the wonderful, frightening, and confusing spaces between childhood and adulthood. In the opening scene, she plays at being a grown-up in the mirror, striking mature poses and experimenting with makeup to the light twinkling of a music box until her parents interrupt her. Embarrassed, she crawls into bed and still clutching her stuffed rabbit, falls asleep and slips into a dream that delivers her to Shadowland. Although confined to the space behind a screen, the dream world contains vast mysterious landscapes, curious creatures, and a cast of unknowable characters. When the protagonist is transformed into a strange creature herself, she struggles to find self-acceptance in a rapidly changing world that she cannot quite understand.
The screen both obscures and illuminates the bodies of the dancers, representing in many ways the blurred lines and nonexistent boundaries that we often seek for in vain as we venture into adulthood. In her coming of age, the protagonist explores the spaces between playfulness and danger, invitations and traps, trust and naivety, realities and dreams. These spaces, represented through the selective illumination of the stage and screen, seem to expand and contract without warning or reason. In her dreamed adventures, the girl learns not necessarily to fully understand the laws of Shadowland, but to observe enough patterns and to build up enough courage to keep herself grounded in a space where sometimes the ground literally falls from beneath her.
Pilobolus achieves incredible feats of illusion behind the screen through experimentation with shape and scale, and yet it is the moments when the screen is lifted that resonate as the most magical. The group’s innovative weight-sharing techniques allow for the dancers to appear often as if they are flying or moving with the assistance of some invisible external force. Watching the collective movements of the dancers, one realizes amazing things the human body is capable of with trust, dedication, and strength. The intimate and exposed interactions between dancers remind the audience that although masked by spectacle, Shadowland tells a story that is intensely human.
After a well-deserved standing ovation, the dancers ran back behind the screen to perform a short tribute to their New York City transfer. With shadows they sculpted skylines, subways, and various monuments from Lady Liberty to our very own Washington Square Arch. As a finale, they spelled out a special “thank you,” expressing that they are as excited to be here as we should be honored to host them.
