Pilobolus Returns

The story is legend: Four decades ago a Dartmouth dance class spawned Pilobolus, the only internationally acclaimed dance company named after a fungus. This June the troupe premieres on campus a new work commissioned by the College. The dance, Hapless Hooligan in “Still Moving,” is a tribute to Happy Hooligan, one of America’s great forgotten comic strip characters. “This new piece, which is Pilobolus’ first collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning comics artist Art Spiegelman (Maus), was inspired by the newspaper comic strips of the early 20th century immigration boom,” says artistic director Michael Tracy ’73. He describes the new dance as “a fond, surreal reverie on the cultural explosion of the period and a bittersweet recollection of the impending economic crash.”