Pilobolus and Joan (1973)

Overview

Pilobolus and Joan is a dance/narrative journey of transformation, a theatrical search for self and love based on Carol Emshwiller's story Metamorphosed. In this inversion of Kafka's Metamorphosis, a cockroach awakens as a man — actually a four-man being, as enacted here by members of the Pilobolus Dance Theatre. Within this serio-comic narrative format, the sculptural configurations of the antic Pilobolus dancers find their video correlative in Emshwiller's inventive imaging juxtapositions and surrealistic manipulations of time and scale. Emshwiller achieves a video theater of the imagination, applying the transformative properties of the electronic medium as a visual counterpoint to the literary text, the gymnastic choreography of Pilobolus, and the musical performances of Joan McDermott.