Momix February 18, 19, 20

The creative exuberance of Momix, an American dance company opening tonight at the Ruth Seaton James Auditorium, promises to dazzle Bermuda Festival audiences with its Opus Cactus.

Momix is a company of dancer-illusionists under the direction of Moses Pendleton. For more than 20 years, Momix has been celebrated for its ability to conjure up a world of surrealistic images using props, light, shadow, humour and the human body.

This internationally known company was actually named after a type of cattle feed.

Mr. Pendleton was raised on a Vermont dairy farm and received his early performing experience exhibiting Holtstein Friesians at the Caledonia County Fair. He received his BA in English Literature from Dartmouth College in 1971 and co-found Pilobolus Dance Theatre in the same year. In the 1970s Pilobolus won world-wide acclaim, including the Berlin Circus Prize in 1975, for its innovative blend of acrobatics and imagination.

Mr. Pendleton began to work outside Pilobolus in 1980 when he choreographed the closing ceremonies for the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid. He also performed his solo 'Momix' at the games, and from that performance the genesis of the company which he founded the following year began to take shape.

According to the San Francisco Guardian, "the beauty of Momix's ideas is partly in their simplicity, partly in their acknowledgement of rhythm, humour, sex and amazing grace of the human body".

Mr. Pendleton has referred to his performers as 'dancer illusionists' and according to Clive Barnes of the New York Post "it's a fair term for these purveyors of Momix's special mix of thrills, skills and theatrics which blend dance, gymnastics and circus acrobatics into a mesmerising brew."

It is the fertile imagination of this talented director/choreographer which continually feeds life and vitality into his troupe of dedicated artists. The Sagaro Cactus or 'Sunflower of the Desert' was the inspiration for Mr. Pendleton's acclaimed work 'Opus Cactus' which has received rave reviews.

Mr. Barnes wrote: "'Opus Cactus' manages to evoke the flora, fauna and uncompromising yet mysterious landscape of the American Southwest in a series of sharp-edged movement vignettes all intended to suggest the strange magic of the Sonoran desert."