Pilobolus: still 'phyloginating' after all these years.

NEW YORK City--"Pilobolus is the sophomore class show that never closed" is how the late Joseph H. Mazo described the company. Serendipitousiy invented by a couple of Dartmouth College undergraduates, Pilobolus, with its unique movement lexicon, is a quarter of a century old this year as it heads into its New York season at the Joyce Theater, June 25 to July 20.

Reciprocals, greyhounds, and rotofurs are among the shorthand terms now as common to the Pilobolus dancer as jete, fouette, and pirouette are to the ballerina. "We have our coagulations, we have our phyloginations, we have our glomming," says Rebecca Jung, one of the two women and four men who comprise today's Pilobolus dancers. The nomenclature, used by the Pilobolus choreographers in collaboration with the dancers, describes various daring partnering, lifting, and sculptural arrangements. Emotionally, the dances range from the surface joy of the 1994 Collideoscope, to the psychological depth of 1992's Duet. (Both works are offered in the Joyce season.

If Pilobolus's terms of entanglement seem similar to biological vocabulary, it's no accident. "The name Pilobolus comes from a fungus that Jonathan Wolken [with Moses Pendleton, the original cofounder of the company] studied with his dad," recalls Alison Chase. It was in Chase's Dartmouth dance class that Pendleton and Wolken met in 1971 and started what would become the dance company. Fellow student Robby Barnett signed up later that same year, Martha Clarke joined in 1973 along with Chase, and Michael Tracy came on board in 1974.

"It was not our lifelong dream to be dance choreographers at that point," recalls Barnett. "We were still college kids enjoying a physical outlet for our creative impulses, and pleased to be doing something that used our bodies as well as our brains. We had no dance training. By developing an understanding of the way weights balanced work, and [the way] we could move tied to each other, we began to work with partnering, pairs, threes, fours in a wa v people hadn't."

"Pilobolus the dance actually preceded Pilobolus the dance company," says Barnett, who, with Chase, Wolken, and Tracy, directs the company today. "The dance was created in Chase's class. With the success and surprise of having made this thing, Wolken, Pendleton, and Steve Johnson took their piece to a college dance conference, where they barnstormed it."

One of the judges at that 1971 New York University conference was Murray Louis of Nikolais and Murray Louis Dance company. "They put on one or two dances, and I was knocked off my socks," recalls Louis. "When they finished, I turned to the other dancers and said, `You guys see what these kids did? That's what you should have been doing.'" Louis invited the budding Pils to perform at the Space, the midtown performance space of the Nikolais and Louis company. "The program was half dancing and half folk singing, which really tried everybody's patience," recalled Louis, referring to the singing.

That initial dance Pilobolus is revived for the first time in the Joyce program. The season also has a premiere, untitled at press time, with music by Paul Sullivan; encores of the 1995 pieces The Doubling Cube and Pyramid of the Moon; and The Particle Zoo, Land's Edge, Quatrejeux, Day 2, Untitled, and 1971's Walklyndon. Day 2, a hurly-bury--paced work to the music of Brian Eno, David Byrne, and the Talking Heads, which concludes with the exuberant dancers sliding across a water-flooded stage, was one of the pieces that first attracted Jung to Pilobolus. Also drawing the now six-year Pil vet were "the partnering, the sculpture, the use of negative space, and the use of other elements. It's not afraid to be naked, it's got history, got hip music, and also has something for everybody as far as exposing people to dance or modern dance or Pilobolus. You know the audience is going to appreciate those water slides; you know they're going to want to do them."

But, kids, don't try this at home! Pilobolus's amoeba-like choreography is dancing on the edge of a precipice; one mistake can be catastrophic. "You're responsible for more than just yourself," says Jung. "We have to watch what we eat and how we sleep and how we have fun in our time off, because we can't be tired or hungry or hung over when working; we're responsible for other people in a big way. I compare it to when I've had to be very precise in turns, leaps, and technique fin other choreography], but in Pilobolus, the precision is being in the moment and anticipating the next movement for you and everybody else."

Jung was dancing Day 2 two years ago when she was dropped, sustaining injuries that eventually kept her out for six months. Only by being able to maintain weekly physical therapy visits was she able to return to work. Still, she says, "Injuries in our company happen far less than people think. When people see our work, they're sitting on the edges of their seats because they think we're going to wipe out a lot. It doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen. It's like being a taxi driver: you hope the cars don't break down and smash into each other, but it happens."

After the Joyce season, the Pilobolus taxi stops at the Olympics Arts Festival in Atlanta, July 24 and 25. It performs at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina, June 6 to 11.