I just watched a documentary called Last Dance, documenting Pilobolus Dance Theatre‘s collaboration with Maurice Sendak on a new piece for their repetoire. It’s available on Netflix and worth a look. Regardless of what you might come to think of the final piece, you can enjoy watching a bit of creative collaborative process. Pilobolus works in a way very near and dear to my heart in which open improvisation leads to discoveries which are then developed and “interpreted” by the other collaborators (particularly Sendak in this case) in light of their own evolving imaginative interests. For me it’s very easy to take the dancers’ fluid physical and psychological sensibilities and apply them to the work of actors, keeping the possibilities just as open and extreme and transformative. The dancers are already quite accomplished “actors” anyway; they just choose to keep their mouths shut (and not even that restriction holds true if you consider some of the work involving mouths and fingers in the resulting piece). The film also allows you a look at how creative differences are worked through (or at least suffered) in the absence of one Director. It’s an enlightening opportunity to watch what happens when people gather in a room together to make something…