Dance: Fungus, Fantasy and Fun

A troupe named Pilobolus has a wildly creative itch

Pilobolus is a word so fine and fat as it rolls off the tongue that, like a kitten or a May morning, it needs no meaning, but in fact it has two. It is the name of a light-sensitive fungus that grows on horse dung-"a rather bawdy little fungus," according to Jonathan Wolken, who met the word and the fungus while studying biology at Dartmouth a few years ago. Wolken also studied modern dance, in an unserious way, in the class of a young teacher named Alison...

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