Mark Fucik, a member of the US dance troupe Pilobolus for 15 years and the creative director Shadowland, says the show is "a coming-of-age story: a girl is trying to figure out who she is and what she wants in her life".
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It sounds a conventional enough subject but there's more to it than that and the trick is in the telling. He says, "This is the first show we've ever done with shadows."
The teenager falls asleep ands when she wakes up finds something lurking behind her bedroom wall. It's her shadow, and then the wall of her bedroom begins to spin, trapping her on the other side and forcing her on a journey of discovery as she tries to find a way out. Along the way she meets all manner of strange creatures – funny, seductive, and threatening – in a dream-like adventure.
Fucik says work began on Shadowland in 2008 and it premiered in 2009 and has been touring internationally since.
Shadowland was created in collaboration with Steve Banks, lead writer for the animated TV series SpongeBob Square Pants, after Pilobolus performed at the 79th Annual Academy Awards in 2007, creating imagery of the best picture nominees in shadow form. Shadowland is a production that combines shadow act, dance, circus and concert, with an original score by musician, songwriter and film composer David Poe and action that involves multiple moving screens of different sizes and shapes and merging projected images and front-of-screen choreography with nine dancers helping to bring the show to life.
"It's almost like a fairytale."
Pilobolus Dance Theater was formed in 1971 by three Dartmouth College students as a modern performance company.
Pilobolus – named after the light-loving fungus that was studied by the father of one of the company's founders – has a repertoire of more than 100 choreographic works performed in more than 60 countries and last toured Australia in 2014.
Fucik, now 42, studied theatre arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey and began dancing when he was 21. He joined the New York-based Pilobolus in 2001 when he was 26 and danced with the main company until 2005. Since then he has worked in many different capacities, performing with Pilobolus Creative Services as a dancer, teacher, and associate creative director.
"We create all our work through collaboration – we're all 'the' director, it's all for everybody," he says.
"It's all through improvisation, we find things. There are many different ways we come together to create things. It's still novel."
Shadowland. Pilobolus. Creative director Mark Fucik. Music by David Poe. The Canberra Theatre. Tuesday, August 30 at 8pm. Tickets $79.70-$98.90. canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.
