Moses Pendleton - the Alchemist of Momix

The Alchemist

Momix Alchemia written by Philip Szporer

For over three decades MOMIX has held audiences in thrall with mass-appeal performances. The company spins inventive theatrical evenings of illusion, attracting people who are not necessarily dance fans. The shows lift people’s spirits with sometimes quirky, humourous, but always marvelous, imagery.

MOMIX’s success lies in its ability to conjure up a fantastical world of surrealistic images, transforming props and sets, puppetry, light, shadow, and the human body. The always graceful, athletic escapades of the company’s technically gifted and physically dexterous performers captivate the public.

Each dancer is a master in accenting the elaborate prop manipulations and sophisticated scenic design.

Artistic director Moses Pendleton’s first incursion in the dance field took place when he was at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, but he wasn’t there to obtain a BFA in

Moses Pendleton

Dance. Pendleton’s mother sent him to the Ivy League university to train with the Olympic ski team. Those were the years 1968-1969, during the Vietnam War, and Dartmouth students were anti-government, anti-establishment, and looking to change the status quo. Although the goal was for Pendleton to be a downhill skier, he’d had an accident. A dance teacher, Alison Chase, encouraged him to take dance as a form of physiotherapy for his broken leg. He found the dancing physical and fun, and he took this “opportunity” to work with his body as a challenge. A group of friends, for the most part athletes, joined him. But it was not just the dancing that he was enamored with, he also learned how to put on a show

Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theatre. The latter company started small and on the streets, always engaged in political theater as a tool for social change. But it was taking a workshop with Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis, two Americans masters of illusion and visual theater, which changed everything for Pendleton. The Nikolais-Louis tandem were radical in their approach in charting new choreographic territory, rejecting narrative dance and emotive storytelling in favor of abstract explorations of movement and space using props, including discs and fabric, composed electronic music, and projections. The result was a ‘total theatre’ dance performance filled with beauty, mystery, and fun.

and entertain an audience.

Pendleton was born and raised on a dairy farm in northern Vermont and his earliest show experience was exhibiting purebred Holstein-Friesian cows at the County Fair. The end result of that event was that some years later he created a dance for fifty Holstein cows on a 500-acre farm.

In 1971, the year he graduated from Dartmouth, he co-founded Pilobolus.

The group was an informal one at first.

The members would collaborate in the creative process, building on ideas communally, and typically performing as a group. Some of Pendleton’s early influences included Joseph Chaikin’s experimental Open Theatre and Peter

A MOVEMENTUM PUBLICATION © Irvine Barclay Theatre and Philip Szporer

2014-2015

In terms of an evolving production language, the Pilobolus vocabulary developed from athletics, and the first theatrical experiments were carried out in silhouette. Pendleton used a “mix and match” approach, tied to the Nikolais-Louis model, involving sound, lighting, and imaging, in which disparate elements were brought together creating a completely new image, in effect shaking up people’s sensibilities.

(Pilobolus, incidentally, is the name of a single-celled intelligent fungus grown on a single stem – a bacteria that catapults in all directions.)

Ultimately opportunities developed for Pendleton outside Pilobolus. He performed an improvised solo called Momix, which takes its name from a cattle feed supplement, at the closing ceremonies of the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid. A year later, Pendleton created MOMIX, the company, as an offshoot of Pilobolus, and the group quickly established an international reputation for its spectacular, highly inventive choreography of illusion.

By diving into the divergent thematic nature of each production, Pendleton and his company members thoroughly investigate the possibilities of movement in the very different worlds they create. It’s a trusting relationship that’s developed, and Pendleton meets his dancers on a level playing field, allowing them to build on their creative choices. He has said, “I take a very IRVINE BARCLAY THEATRE

naturalistic approach. I don’t come in and say, ‘Do this or do that,’ but I try to be a catalyst for the choreography.”

MOMIX’s treatment of its subjects is varied and distinctive. In Opus Cactus (2001), Pendleton draws images from his explorations of a variety of desert landscapes to present a fantastic visually appealing world inhabited by exotic elements of flora and fauna, like tumbleweeds, cacti, articulated ostriches, and a caterpillar chain. Baseball (1994) begins with scenes in pre-historic times and addresses athleticism and its link to US culture at-large, playing up the spirit of the game and its possible demise. Botanica (2009), which is billed as an “herbal remedy and natural aphrodisiac for our current universal blues’’ is a multimedia journey through the four seasons, blending movement, circus, athleticism and magical effects.

With its colorful costumes, marvelous moves, and an eclectic soundtrack from birdsongs to Vivaldi, Botanica reveals an ever-changing flora and fauna.

The company’s most recent production, Alchemia (2013), is a dazzling work in two parts, employing acrobatic, aerial apparatuses combined with ropes, mirrors, extensive lighting and projections. True to form, Pendleton spins the idea of using the four classic elements – earth, air, fire and water – as raw material for a spectrum of musical, visual and poetic effects.

California premiere

Momix

“Alchemia” March 11, 2015 Series Sponsor Cheng Family Foundation

and an anonymous fund of the

Orange County Community Foundation

Alchemy, by definition, is a process of transformation, and by linking it to the theatrical experience the company is tapping into, and celebrating, an ancient and empowering mode of metamorphosis. As Pendleton has stated, “Alchemy… can be anything.

MOMIX is alchemy.” For the spectator, watching any of the company’s stylized routines results in a visually surprising experience. The magic of the MOMIX spectacle fundamentally rests with Pendleton and his creative collaborators engaging in the process of delivering moments of wonder, grace and symmetry, and presenting art and dance as a global force.

Philip Szporer is a Montreal-based lecturer, writer and filmmaker.

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