An interview with Renée Jaworski & Matt Kent, as Pilobolus returns to the Joyce Theater to celebrate a half-century of wit and sensuality
by Robert Pranzatelli
When Pilobolus first rose to prominence in the 1970s, the New Yorker’s Arlene Croce sang its praises as a “brilliant acrobatic-mime troupe” rather than as a dance company. When it reached Broadway in 1977, New York Times critic Anna Kisselgoff wrote what seemed to be a rejoinder: “Yes, it is dance if the definition of dance is stretched.” In the decades since, Pilobolus has continued to stretch, remix, rejuvenate, call into question, and blithely ignore the definition of dance, if there still is one, to the delight of multiple generations of audiences. When it returns to the Joyce Theater from July 11 to 30, for a run of more than two dozen shows, the company will bring to conclusion its playfully titled fiftieth anniversary tour: “The Big Five-OH!”
Now led by two of its most extraordinary veteran dancers, Renée Jaworski and Matt Kent, Pilobolus still places its energetic and ebulliently improbable physical vocabulary in the service of wit and humanity, working its dancers hard in a studio space in bucolic Washington, Connecticut. Its two leaders have together accumulated a half-century of Pilobolus experience themselves, having performed, created, and directed works that span the full range of its eclectic sensibility and daring athleticism. Matt Kent joined the company in 1996 as a longhaired ninja, having studied martial arts, music therapy, and theatre; Renée Jaworski joined in 2000, with both a traditional training in dance and a set of untraditional skills and insights garnered from having danced with Momix, the illusion-loving troupe concocted by Moses Pendleton, one of the originators of Pilobolus.
I checked in with Renée and Matt on a Friday afternoon as they prepared for the New York run. The interview took place via video call, with the two interviewees seated together in the Pilobolus office. They are my close friends and also two of the principal subjects of a book about Pilobolus, written by me, to be published next year. Our conversation was casual and punctuated by laughter. It has been edited for clarity.
For people who don’t already know Pilobolus, how would you describe what Pilobolus does and what people will encounter when they see this show? You’ve told me, Renée, that Pilobolus creates miniature worlds onstage.
Matt: You have to get your interdimensional passports ready because you’re going to go to these very different worlds. These programs are going to have a range of emotions to them. When the dancers ran the first half of the Joyce program that has six pieces instead of five, I said “How did that feel?” and Hannah turned to me and said, “I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster.” It wasn’t a bad thing.
Renée: When we’re putting a program together we really are thinking about just that: the ride the audience is going to go on. We want to hit the highs and the lows and the things that you don’t get in touch with on your day-to-day basis, allowing people to experience things that they wouldn’t normally pay attention to outside of the theater. So then when they walk out into their real life, there’s a little bit more of a—I want to say rawness, but that sounds negative—
Matt: No, I don’t think it’s negative—
Renée: A vulnerability, an openness.
Matt: You’re seeing things anew. You walk outside, it’s the same outside it was before, but somehow the world seems—
Renée: You might have a different perspective somehow.
That’s a good definition of what art is, or what art does.
You’re sitting in front of this wonderful painting of sunflowers, and I’m thinking about how you’re working in the studio getting ready for this run. Is there a secret ingredient as you create? What are the moments of joy in the studio in terms of camaraderie, laughter, the best moments with the dancers? Take us into some of the happier aspects of life in the studio with Pilobolus as you’re preparing for this.
Matt: That does happen to us, a particularly magical collaborative moment, but to paint the visual picture, we’re not in New York, horns, traffic, blaring. Those days that you feel the sunshine coming through or the beautiful snow falling outside and you’re working on a piece or rehearsing, that feels like we’re in some kind of residency that’s your actual life, like you’re in a retreat. There are moments that—when you said “happy”—I think about the communal, in both senses of the word, moments that we share with the dancers and with each other. I’ve walked outside with them just to get some sunshine. We’ve been trying to take these breaks every ninety minutes or so, and we all step outside and realize that we’re surrounded by this beautiful environment.
Renée: There’s also something that happens between the people. We equate it to jazz. You can tell when everybody is...
Matt: Gelling...
Renée: Gelling, or on the same vibe, or running at full speed in the same direction. And it gets very... uh...
Matt: Groovy, man?
Renée: Groovy, man.
[Laughter.]
Matt: Renée and I went to this amazing little bar in New York years and years ago. David Poe was playing there.
Renée: It was called Entwine.
Matt: Yeah, called Entwine. Chris Stills, Stephen Stills’ son, was playing. It just so happened, before we knew them, Béla Fleck and Abigail [Washburn], they performed there.
Renée: It was the first time we heard Abbie sing. We were like, Whoa!
Matt: And a bunch of people. A bunch of musicians. And unlike when somebody has a setlist and they’re planning, they would noodle and you would hear the piano and the room was filled with conversation while you waited for the guys to share with each other what they were about to play. And then the clouds would part—and it was like what I imagine when The Dead were at one of their peaks—
Renée: There’s no 1,2,3,4 boom and then everybody starts. It’s sort of like—
Matt: Yeah, the piano player keeps jamming and then that person catches on, oh I got you, and—
Renée: And then the room goes quiet and they’re in the beginning of a song and everybody knows it. Every single person in the room, whether they’re playing an instrument or not, knew that the song began.
Matt: As directors, when we’re choreographing, there are moments where the dancers really command my attention like that. When I forget that this is a thing I’m making, and I’m just absorbed in watching. They’re so beautiful, and their creativity—there are moments when you’re fully into that moment.
I think it’s important to say that another moment of joy, just to be clear, some of the times the moments of joy are right after we’ve had the worst fucking disagreement, the dancers aren’t getting something, I can’t figure out what they’re doing wrong, one of them says that’s hurting my back, someone says I don’t know what to do. Put your foot there. That doesn’t work for me. A kind of harmony that comes out of disharmony. It’s worth noting that it’s not all just new age music and flowers blooming and shit. There are real moments of tension and disagreement, and I personally find the days that alternate between disagreement and agreement to be much, much more satisfying and productive. It’s nice to have those perfect days, but in terms of making a piece, I think it’s so gratifying, so joyful, when you identify something that doesn’t work between two people and you work it out.
I’ve joked with you in the past, that my idea of risk is getting out of bed in the morning. And that this is why I’m so impressed by people who do things like stand on someone else’s shoulders while they’re dancing, or dance on stilts, or swing on silks. Or stand on a stage and flip themselves over and land standing up as in Megawatt.
