PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATER
At the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., at 19th Street, (212) 242-0800. Through July 28.
BOUNCING athletically through its month-long New York season at the Joyce Theater, the Pilobolus Dance Theater offers three distinct programs, each with its own New York premiere.
The first program, including the premiere of the fascinating “Davenen,” has already been reviewed. The second premiere, Alison Chase’s “Monkey and the White Bone Demon,” looked as odd as it sounded. It takes its theme from a 16th-century mythological novel.
Monkey, a Buddhist convert capable of supernatural feats, escorts Monk, Sandy and Piggy on a journey to spiritual enlightenment, protecting them from the White Bone Demon, a nasty creature capable of innumerable disguises.
The fun story is told with energized simplicity – the concept of the journey always present, and the various battles depicted with an acrobatic crispness that recalls the physical dexterity of the warriors of the Peking Opera.
Michael Tracy’s “Symbiosis,” the third and last premiere, is a sensuous, erotic-lite duet for Renee Jaworski and Otis Cook. With its entwining limbs and complex lifts and holds, it was ingenious, if fairly generic, Pilobolean fare.