Pilobolus Launches 'Get Out the Vote' Campaign

The internationally acclaimed dance company Pilobolus has launched a grassroots get-out-the-vote campaign. The campaign started with a Robert Whitman photograph of the company's dancers' bodies spelling out the word "VOTE" at their home base in Connecticut. This idea came out of Pilobolus's longstanding institutional commitment to exploring new ways to communicate ideas through the medium of the human body.

The troupe then reached out to local members of their community to make their own photographic representation of the word "VOTE," which Whitman photographed a series of (available for viewing at www.pilobolus.org and www.facebook.com/pilobolus). Then Pilobolus decided to take the campaign from coast to coast and launched the Instagram hashtag #pilobolusvoteproject, encouraging Instagram users everywhere to make their own creative "VOTE" photos and post them. (Non-Instagram users, you can participate in the project by emailing your photo to info@pilobolus.org.)

"The Pilobolus Vote Project is our way to create something together that doesn't just say, "Vote,' but also encourages people to join physically to express themselves as a group, as a community. Our hope is that the Pilobolus Vote Project will empower people to have a voice, regardless of political leanings, and to share that voice with their peers," said Pilobolus Executive Director Itamar Kubovy

Shortly after the launch of the Instagram campaign the New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment caught wind of the project and partnered with Pilobolus to create a new series of VOTE photos in front of iconic New York City landmarks. On Sunday (10/21/12), Whitman photographed the dancers' single-word message at local landmarks, including The Apollo Theater, Brooklyn Bridge, the Bronx Zoo, Grand Central Station, the Staten Island Ferry terminal, Times Square, Unisphere and the Financial District's "Charging Bull." These photos will be the centerpiece of www.whosontheballot.org non-partisan digital and print voter outreach campaign. The WhosOntheBallot.org website provides New York City citizens with easy access to election information. Plans are also in the works for using these photographs in a larger outdoor print campaign geared toward encouraging people to get educated about the candidates and vote.

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.

Robert Whitman believes that many people first pick up a camera to record their passions whatever they may be. But sooner or later, the best of them find that photography itself is their real passion. That's true of Robert Whitman. Along the way, he found not just a pastime, but a way of life. As a young hippie traveling the world after college, Robert found that with his camera he had entree to people and places he never would have encountered. He's been on a life long journey of discovery ever since, with stops in Brazil, Cuba, Arizona, Miami Beach, Moscow and Uruguay, just to name a few of the places where he's lived and worked. Photographing people from all over, young and old, rich or poor, Robert has the ability to reveal The Common humanity that unites us all. And, obviously, he had a lot of fun along the way. It's been a great trip!