Ballet pays tribute to desert beauty
MOMIX dance company founder drew inspiration from Arizona desert
It’s all about the moving image.
OK, maybe it’s stating the obvious to say that about a dance company, but Moses Pendleton’s MOMIX really works to create something picturesque. That’s because this visionary choreographer uses the human body — sometimes with a few props, or even black light — more like a tool, re-creating shapes or structures or life forms he has found in nature, or drawing something entirely new.
“My working method is to create, almost more like a sculptor or painter creates images first,” he explains, “and then add music, lighting, costumes and props, the details that fill out the overall effect.”
Opus Cactus, the show that marks MOMIX’s Alberta debut, originated about 15 years ago when Pendleton was commissioned to do a piece for Ballet Arizona. After being raised on a dairy farm in Vermont, taking in the landscape of the Sonoran Desert felt entirely alien to the choreographer. Since then, he has re-worked and expanded the piece to create a celebrated new full-length work.
He recalls being especially drawn to the cacti.
“In the half-light as the day turns to night, they were mysterious and magical and became kind of a muse for the ballet. They almost looked like a dance company. Part of the esthetic for this show is the contact made between the human and non-human, and to see how we’re connected through dancetheatre. For me, it’s always been an interesting exploration of the plant and animal worlds, to see howthey connect with each other.” leton’s ern athletic and west. eclectic, Art fauna dance All and ingenious moves atmospheric that of science illusions, the is to tied American sketch series meet to often set a in the of of broadly south- Pend- using tunes mod- flora running Can Transglobal Dance from to Underground, Brian Mickey Eno Hart and Dead from and classical “I was trying to Arabic to create traditions. a poetic, fantastical experience for people and, for MO MIX, fantasy is an integral part of the reality of each show.
You don’t have to know anything about it, just expect theun expected as it takes you on a trip into this desert botanical garden.”
Pendleton says his props work simply enough but the effect is something bigger, sometimes creepy or kooky. all “In in yellow one piece with we very see large four women Oriental fans that we painted yellow. We use a Native American lullaby to push the Aboriginal feeling to it, and so a fan dance turns into what I called a Sun Dance. In another part, we use simple eight-foot poles to create more of a warrior dance, and we use a kind of polevaulting action to launch the body. Props are used kind of as extensions of the body to create new movements or motions, and maybe new emotions.” It’s not surprising to learn that Connecticut-based Pendleton, now 68, is an enthusiastic, exhibiting photographer on the side. “The act of photography does train your eye. I have walked thighdeep in the snow because I know on a windy night that that light snow has drifted and been sculpted by nature, and I know where to go to find it. That’s my visual journal.”
But how did someone born and raised on a dairy farm, who once exhibited prize Holsteins at the county fair, how did this guy wind up founding two internationally acclaimed modern dance companies? Like some other great inventors, he stumbled into it by accident, literally.
Back around 1970, Pendleton was an English major focusing on romantic poetry at Dartmouth College when he broke his leg in a skiing mishap. Someone suggested that he should take a dance class to help him get back in shape for the college ski team and that led to his part in co-founding the Pilobolus company in 1971 with several other classmates. At the same time, mu--
sic classes with the late jazz trumpeter Don Cherry inspired him to look far and wide for audio source material.
“I didn’t have a dance background but I did have an athletic background, and that’s how we started to make our own dances. In my early days with Pilobolus, I was learning howto take several bodies and combine them in various ways to make something you couldn’t do otherwise. It’s athletic theatre with highly trained capable bodies and yet they can create the illusion of a Gila monster.”
Pilobolus was already world famous when Pendleton left to create his own Connecticut-based MOMIX company in 1981. Since then, the group’s reach has taken in five continents, Olympic and Expo ceremonies, international television broadcasts, featured performances in Imax-3-D and in Robert Altman’s movie The Company, and commercials for Mercedes-Benz and Walmart among others.
Pendleton hasn’t lost his love for poetry. It’s just that, “now I’m making a haiku with an elbow or a kneecap.”
Perhaps it’s typical of the choreographer’s sense of humour that MOMIX takes its name from a nutritional supplement that’s fed to veal calves, and humour is a frequent part of their shows.
“We take our humour very seriously,” he jests. “Aside from the technique, the most important thing for a MOMIX dancer is to be able to laugh at their director’s jokes.”
In the end, humour becomes a key ingredient in helping to ground the show.
“We try to create an atmosphere that’s somewhat chaotic on a certain level, but there is a method to the madness. We’re trying to tap into the collective unconscious. How do you get a group of dancers motivated enough to jump out of their skins?”
MOMIX is presented by Alberta Ballet as a special guest touring feature that keeps the season going while Alberta Ballet prepares its next shows, Cinderella, and the Tragically Hip Ballet, All Of Us.
Opus Cactus is one of several MOMIX shows which often tour simultaneously in different parts of the world for hundreds of performances each season. Five male and five female dancers and two technicians work to create Pendleton’s vision of the American southwest in all its glory.
Following this Alberta debut for MOMIX, he’s hoping to bring his latest creation, Alchemy.