Created by Derion Loman, Madison Olandt, Renée Jaworski and Matt Kent in collaboration with Nathaniel Buchsbaum, Quincy Ellis, Marlon Feliz, Hannah Klinkman, Paul Liu, and Zack Weiss

Music:Jad Abumrad, Costumes:Valerie St. Pierre Smith, Lighting:Thom Weaver

Artistic Director Matt Kent recalls an early conversation with Derion Loman, Pilobolus’s first Dancer Apprentice in 2011 and creative partner Madison Olandt - “Derion and I were chatting about Pilobolus’s Shadow work and the technical similarities to video and specifically Derion and Madison’s lovely work on Unconscious.”

“Oddly, given the name of their film, it was only later that we thought to create a piece around the idea of sleep, insomnia, dreaming. That was a result of a play date with our dancers and [founder of Radiolab and public radio icon] Jad Abumrad. It was as if two separate collaborators on two separate projects were talking about the exact same things. Noctuary is the result of an unexpected intersection.”

We were joined by Valerie St. Pierre Smith as costume designer and Thom Weaver, lighting designer. They contributed more than their titles. Everyone on this project brought their imaginations, ruminations, questions and fantasy to the table.

We bring our music collaborators in before the narrative is fully told through movement - both the music and movement inspire the world that we are building and rely on each other to hold the world up. Without one, the others fall  (just like the dancers themselves). 

“Jad Abumrad is a pioneering science communicator, journalist, and podcaster, a storyteller who uses sound as a medium in the same way that we are storytellers that use movement as our medium,” says Executive/Co-Artistic Director Renée Jaworski. “He is also a friend and longtime collaborator. We were on a Zoom call with him when we learned he was retiring from Radiolab, the iconoclastic podcast he created. I slyly asked him if he had any plans for future projects, knowing that Matt and I were looking for an opportunity to work with him again. He said he would be ‘foraging for mushrooms, literally and figuratively.’ Which left a clear opening for Matt to say, ‘Well, we have an idea….’” We brought Jad in for some R&D to create material that we could use to search for funding. 

Jad joined us in the studio and brought his musings on dreams and sleep. Sounds that described the act of falling asleep, dreaming, sleep disruption, and sounds of reality filtered through a dream…he provided us with multiple layers of consciousness, in sonic form, to continue to play with and create a structure around.

Matt took those musical musings and built a sound score. After Jad left, we built upon those ideas we discovered with him. We choreographed to Chopin. We then met Jad at his Brooklyn home and, with the rehearsal video in hand, explained where we saw dream logic shifting time and tone and where the sounds of the real world would seep into the dream world. The sound and the movement created something that would not have been possible if we created the whole piece and then asked him to score it.

Pilobolus has been recognized for its illusions. A reputation we gained from our partnering technique that often creates a sense of antigravity, and our ability to combine bodies in such a way that the performers appear as something other than humans, whether that is through partnering, our combining our forms in shadows to create composite figures, or hiding beneath a dancers long dress to create a Tall Lady.

We have also learned to create real stage magic with our friends Penn & Teller, and the late great Johnny Thompson. We created a Houdini escape act for the stage and our favorite reality show Fool Us in 2010. We worked with Teller and Aaron Posner developing award winning choreography for Shakespeare’s The Tempest in which Caliban is portrayed by two actress constantly sharing each other's weight. And most recently we developed with the two magic icons a levitation act where we turned “sleight of hand into sleight of body,” as Mr. Jillette phrased it. 

This is how this piece began,working with a sheet and the idea of levitation. Unlike a magic show (which by the way, is much more difficult!), we do not need to fool anyone; we just need to create an illusion that the audience will go along with. They are our conspirators. This allows us to create some amazing images, and it also brings the audience into the world of creation.