Pilobolus Dance Theatre to Perform at Smothers Theatre, 3/25

Combining gymnastics, weight sharing, pop dance, and performance art in a delightfully whimsical human circus, the innovative award-winning dance troupe Pilobolus takes the Smothers stage at Pepperdine University on Wednesday, March 25 at 8 p.m.

Tickets, priced starting at $25 for adults and $10 for full-time Pepperdine students, are available now by calling (310) 506-4522 or online at http://arts.pepperdine.edu/. More information: http://pilobolus.com/

The company will perform five pieces: On The Nature Of Things, Skyscrapers, Automaton, The Inconsistent Pedaler, and Sweet Purgatory.

On The Nature Of Things (2014) Performed by three dancers balanced on a two-foot wide column rising above the stage, On The Nature Of Things explores the power of iconic bodies to tell a story about the birth of desire and its intertwined connection to shame and revenge.

Skyscrapers (2012) Set against the gritty, saturated colors of LA's Eastside streets, Skyscrapers explores the melancholy, understated elegance of the tango, quintessential street dance, drenched in overtones of love, romance, and loss. Pilobolus once again joins Trish Sie (co-creator of the Grammy-nominated Pilobolus/OK Go video and live dance, All Is Not Lost) to imagine Sie's brilliant new video for OK Go's Skyscrapers as a work for the live stage. This quick-change duet follows a never-ending, always-changing journey in search of connection.

Automation (2012) A new collaboration with the internationally renowned choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. The result is a cyborg of a dance that questions the difference between human and machine. Somewhere between Tron and Bladerunner, Automaton takes place in a mirrored world that allows us to view multiple angles at the same time. Deep emotions punctuate the intoxicating rhythms of the machine as we experience a journey through a time that seems yet to come.

The Inconsistent Pedaler (2014) A surrealist fable about a girl who rides a bicycle that has the power to speed up and slow down time, The Inconsistent Pedaler is an absurd, acrobatic, and lyrical collaboration between Pilobolus, fiction writer Etgar Keret, and filmmaker Shira Geffen that opens up a mesmerizing physical world.

Sweet Purgatory (1991) - Commissioned by American Dance Festival for Pilobolus' 20th anniversary. It is a response to the music of Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony and the remarkable orchestration for strings of his own 8th Quartet. The score suggests and the dance explores sequentially a hovering premonitory world, its descent into Hades, and the determined climb back toward Purgatory and finally, out of an ominous post-apocalyptic surroundings toward Hope.

Founded in 1971 and based in Washington Depot, Connecticut, Pilobolus is a modern performance company that to this day wears its revolutionary stripes on its sleeves. In keeping with its fundamentally collective creative process, Pilobolus Dance Theatre curates and convenes groups of diverse artists to make inventive, athletic, witty, and 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.

Pilobolus Dance Theatre performs for stage, television, and online audiences all over the world. Pilobolus has been featured across the world at the 79th Annual Academy Awards (2007), and on Sesame Street, Oprah, 60 Minutes, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. It has been recognized with prestigious honors, such as the Berlin Critic's Prize, the Scotsman Award, the Brandeis Award, a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cultural Programming, the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement in Choreography, and a TED Fellowship for presenting at the TED conference in 2005. Pilobolus holds the 2011 Guinness World Record for fitting the most people into a Mini Cooper (26); and in 2012, the company was nominated for a Grammy Award for its interactive music video collaboration with OK Go and Google Chrome Japan, "All is Not Lost."

In 2010 Pilobolus was honored as the first collective to receive the Dance Magazine Award, which recognizes artists who have made lasting contributions to the field. Pilobolus works also appear in the repertories of major American and European dance companies.

In 2005 Pilobolus transferred its archive to Dartmouth College, where the company originated. Since then the college has been growing the "living archive" with a series of new-work commissions.

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.

The Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts at Pepperdine University provides high-quality activities for over 50,000 people from 664 zip codes annually through performances, rehearsals, museum exhibitions, and master classes. Located on Pepperdine's breathtaking Malibu campus overlooking the Pacific, the center serves as a hub for the arts, uniquely linking professional guest artists with Pepperdine students as well as patrons from surrounding Southern California communities. Facilities include the 450-seat Smothers Theatre, the 118-seat Raitt Recital Hall, the "black box" Helen E. Lindhurst Theatre, and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art.

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