Pilobolus -- a groundbreaking modern dance troupe founded in 1971 by two Dartmouth students -- donated the valuable newspaper clippings, playbills, photos, videos, publicity material and posters that archive their history to the Rauner Special Collections Library, the College announced Thursday.
The archive is available to all students, faculty and visiting researchers as a resource, but according to Special Collections Librarian Jay Satterfield, it will take several years to categorize the archive and make the information accessible.
"We are delighted to have this collection," Satterfield said. "It's interesting to see how the environment at Dartmouth at the time helped foster that creative output."
Satterfield said Pilobolus' unique history makes them relevant to many facets in the world of academia.
"They're a fascinating troupe that really shook up the dance world when they came out. They were doing things that no one else was doing," Satterfield said.
Jonathan Wolken '71 co-founded and performed in the six-person troupe and now serves as one of its artistic directors. He said Dartmouth seemed the natural place to house the 60-box archive, which Satterfield deemed to be of significant pecuniary worth.
Even though the troupe's reputation has grown exponentially since its early days, the company -- which has expanded to include three touring companies and an educational program called the Pilobolus Institute -- still depends on donations to continue operating.
While men traditionally bear the weight in dance, Pilobolus' formations distributed weight evenly or sometimes experimented with having the smaller female bear the weight, making them significant in the history of women and gender studies, he said.
Satterfield said changing gender roles in this way resonated with their audience in the 1970s and 1980s, and may have helped contribute to their meteoric rise in popularity.
The troupe appeared in a nationally broadcast oil company commercial, a rare degree of publicity for a dance troupe, Satterfield said.
Wolken acknowledged that Pilobolus has always taken an untraditional approach to dance. When planning performances, the members consider what would be interesting to a general audience.
"Part of what Pilobolus thrives on is not just doing something different, but doing something fun that has an impact. People embrace that," Wolkin said.
Its distinctive name is emblematic of this philosophy. Pilobolus is a beautiful barnyard fungus introduced to Wolken in his father's biophysics laboratory. The fungus' small size belies its strength, a metaphor for the weight-bearing physics of the troupe.
Pilobolus' spherical dance style and theatrical elements has permanently impacted the world of modern dance already, but the archive at Rauner will continue to expand in the coming years.
"How they manage to stay together and do what they do is an interesting question for sociologists," Satterfield said. He jokingly referred to them as "The Rolling Stones of dance."
Pilobolus plans to perform at Dartmouth at least three times in the next year.
