Most flexible dancers

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Now almost 40 years old, Pilobolus, the acrobatic modern dance company that Jonathan Wolken co-founded with three fellow Dartmouth students in 1971, had spent some of its 20s and 30s mired in mid-life crisis. Plagued by internal strife and struggling to remain financially solvent, the company’s four artistic directors essentially decided they needed a boss and, in 2004, hired Itamar Kubovy to be their executive director.

Five years later and despite the departure of longtime artistic director Alison Chase in 2005, Pilobolus seems not only alive and well but galvanized by its efforts to reinvent itself. With an operating budget of more than $4 million and a packed touring schedule, the company, headquartered in rural Connecticut, also has branched out in recent years by forging successful collaborations with other artists and applying its their methods of communal art making to educational and corporate projects.

“It’s taken all of us some time to regroup, and we’ve gone through crests and valleys over the years, but we’ve never allowed any of that to stop the momentum of our creative lives,” says Robby Barnett, who serves as artistic director of Pilobolus along with Wolken and Michael Tracy. “As an organization, we’ve always been able to barrel forward, push that engine along.”

The flexible troupe appears next weekend at the Music Center. To read more about the dancers these days, see the Arts & Books section, or click here.