We perform internationally for 60,000+ people each year – and create custom performances, digital content, movement experiments, and live events.
You’ve seen us at the Oscars, the VMAs, and the Olympics, and we’ve collaborated with OK Go, the NFL, Hyundai, RadioLab, Penn & Teller, and more. Honors include a TED Fellowship, a Grammy® Nomination, a Primetime Emmy® Award, and several Cannes Lion Awards.
Pilobolus began at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in 1971. Moses Pendleton, an English literature major and cross-country skier; Jonathan Wolken, a philosophy major and fencer; and Steve Johnson, a pre-med student and pole vaulter were enrolled in a dance composition class taught by Alison Becker Chase. In that class, they created their first dance, which they titled “Pilobolus” —and a legacy of movement and magic was born.
Named after Pilobolus crystallinus, a light loving fungi whose spores accelerate from 0–45 mph in the first millimeter of their flight, the group went on to create dozens of dance works with its founding members: Robby Barnett, Alison Chase, Martha Clarke, Moses Pendleton, Michael Tracy, and Jonathan Wolken.
Pilobolus is now under the direction of the founder-succeeding leadership of Executive/Co-Artistic Director Renée Jaworski and Artistic Director Matt Kent prepared to bring Pilobolus into its next half century.