STAGE TUBE: Go Behind the Scenes of Pilobolus' AZIMUTH, Premiering Tonight, 7/18

The groundbreaking and internationally acclaimed dance company Pilobolus today unveiled a behind-the-scenes video of its new work, Aziumth. The piece will have its New York premiere tonight as part of Pilobolus's 2012 Joyce Theater engagement, which began performances on Monday, July 16, and runs through August 11. Tonight will mark the first performance of the engagement's Program B, which features Azimuth. Watch the video below!

A product of Pilobolus's International Collaborators Project, which curates and convenes multi-disciplinary artists to choreograph using Pilobolus's creative method with the company's directors and dancers, Azimuth represents a unique collaboration with MacArthur "Genius" Award-winning master juggler Michael Moschen. The piece turns the act of juggling on its side. Uniting the underlying spirit of Pilobolus's work-support, humanity, connection-with his own fascination with the emotional and physical properties that govern human interaction, Moschen investigates the geometries of the universe through objects that roll in harmony with the dancers and the celestial machine. Azimuth, an astrology term referring to the arc of the horizon, was choreographed by Pilobolus's Renee Jaworski and Michael Tracy, along with Moschen.

In 2007, to expand its collaborative practices, Pilobolus launched the International Collaborators Project, a series of collective choreographic projects with multi-disciplinary artists, such as writer and illustrator, Maurice Sendak; the Israeli choreographic team, Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak; the remarkable American puppeteer, Basil Twist; Pulitzer Prize-winner, comic artist Art Spiegelman; the Grammy-winning American composer and musician Dan Zanes; the band OK Go; the MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory directed by Professor Daniela Rus; the Japanese butoh choreographer Takuya Muramatsu; the radio program Radiolab; and the Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. The interactive video that Pilobolus created with OK Go and Google, "All Is Not Lost", was nominated for a 2012 Grammy Award.

Michael Moschen is a juggler. He has created unique objects and manipulation techniques for Performance Theater for thirty years. Utilizing his self- taught 'creative process' he questions and explores what it is to be human. Presently, he is completing a self-imposed challenge to create, from scratch, progressive physical skills and simple objects that celebrate each individual person's ability to learn and share simple mathematics, music and physics. Moschen is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant.

Pilobolus is a modern performance company, founded in 1971, that to this day wears its revolutionary stripes on its sleeves. In keeping with its fundamentally collective creative process, Pilobolus Dance Theatre now curates and convenes groups of diverse artists- including the MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory, Art Spiegelman, OK Go, Radiolab, and many others-to make inventive, athletic, witty, collaborative performance works on stage and screen using the human body as a medium for expression. Pilobolus makes art to build community. It teaches its group-based creative process to performers and non-dancers alike through popular, unique educational projects and programs. This collection of activities is called the Pilobolus Institute. Pilobolus also applies its method of creative invention to a wide range of movement services for film, advertising, publishing, commercial clients, and corporate events. This division is called Pilobolus Creative Services.

The 2012 season marks Pilobolus's 41st year. In keeping with the energy and spirit of its biological namesake-a phototropic fungus that thrives in farmyards-the company has continued to grow toward the light, expanding and refining its unique methods of collective creative production to assemble a repertoire of over 100 choreographic works. While it has become a stable and influential force in the world of dance, Pilobolus remains as protean as ever, looking forward to the next 40 years of collaborating on the future. For more about Pilobolus, visit www.pilobolus.org.

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