Shadowland. Photograph via Shadowland Live.
Shadowland, from the American dance company Pilobolus, is an internationally acclaimed production that has been seen by more than half a million people worldwide, and is now touring Australia for the second time.
Shadowland is a mixture of shadow play combined with dance in front of, and behind, multiple screens. The production turns its back on high tech effects and instead makes almost all the visual effects from the shadows of the dancers. The story tells of a young girl as she lies in bed trying to go to sleep and of her voyage into the world of Shadowland where she is turned into a strange animal/human hybrid – a girl with a dog’s head. We follow her experiences as she moves through shadow worlds full of strange human/plant/creature amalgams, that are often surreal and intriguing. The way in which shadow forms are created is often deliberately revealed as the projections screens move to one side to reveal the massed bodies and different formations of the dancers behind.
The central dancer, Heather Favretto, who has been dancing with Pilobolus since 2008 plays the part of the Dog Girl. Favretto is a fluid and sinuous mover who makes the extended sequences in which she is flown around the stage by the other dancers, engaging and fun to watch. This first part of the show has a gentle charm, and is whimsical and quirky. The use of the shadows created by the bodies is inventive and in places original and distinctive.
The show’s episodic structure with the insertion of very similar movement material between each of the adventure sequences means that the show becomes repetitive, and the work starts to lose direction, focus and pace.
After taking applause and extended bows and throwing copious quantities of glitter in the air, at this performance the dancers spelt out the word ‘Sydney’ in shadows using their bodies to form the letters, and then made the shadow of a kangaroo with a joey in its pouch followed closely by a koala. This final material felt kitsch, as though it had been inserted as a crowd pleaser to lengthen the show, but the Sydney audience loved it, and the show finished up with much whooping and hollering from the crowd.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Shadowland, Pilobolus
2-4 September 2016
The State Theatre, Sydney
7-10 September
His Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide
Created by Pilobolus’s Dancers and Directors in collaboration with
Writer: Steven Banks
Composer: David Poe
