Pilobolus Dance Theatre.

PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATRE MARIN VETERANS' MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM, SAN RAFAEL, CA JANUARY 28, 2005

The preadolescents in the audience loved the slackers' kneepads, the pratfalls, the dancers scootching on their bottoms like toddlers. They warmed to the repeated, nasty scenes of scape-goating and didn't seem to mind the uncomical act of picking crud out of underwear, or the sudden show of breasts, flashed the way a tipsy 12-year-old might. They also liked the string of music, from Radiohead to Eminem, that hit us like the disconnected soundblast from a video game. But the rest of the house? Fagettaboutit.

The company's 90-minute, uninterrupted world premiere, Megawatt, was loud, brash, and looked and even sounded hip. But as the undeveloped and banal vignettes piled up, the hip feel turned feral. It soon became apparent that Pilobolus was physicalizing the face of our culture that permits our more regressed instincts to rule. That might have been fine, except that the company forgot to insert any critique into the proceedings. Not only did Megawatt lack any true wattage, it was dance lost in the dark.

The opening held promise. The stage was marked off by three stripes of light around the perimeter (design by Scott Borowka), as though to suggest a boxing ring or other contact-sport zone. Then, like multicolored inchworms, bodies began to surge in from the sides as a bass guitar rift blared and indecipherable lyrics burbled amid dire, comprehensible fragments like "I suited it out, boy." One could feel a flash of excitement hit the audience when it caught a glimpse of Pilobolus' famed physicality, its circusy way of using bodies as organic elements in a larger whole. But within a half-hour, as dancing dragged down into schtick and daring fizzled into half-hearted entanglements, the excitement leaked off. The entire production began to feel like it suffered from a bad case of ADD.

Dancers Mark Fucik, Renee Jaworski, Andrew Herro, Cleotha McJunkins III, Jenny Mendez, and Manelich Minniefee all had moments of virtuosity or charm. But Pilobolus, the "decomposer" fungus after which the company is named, magically digests organic matter and changes it. Pilobolus the dance company ate but didn't transform.

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