On Sunday, Nov. 2, MOMIX performed an anticipated show of acrobatic dance at UTD. If you haven’t heard of them, MOMIX is a troupe created by dancer and choreographer Moses Pendelton over 40 years ago that blends dance with acrobatic gymnastics and complex prop work. Pendelton was recently awarded the Brettell Award by UTD to the tune of $150,000. Since I enjoy theater, the free show on campus was a must-see.
The BAHT auditorium was nearly full, and my ticket, booked a week and a half in advance, left me in the balcony. Even before the show started, I was greeted by bass-heavy electronic drum beats, flute and meditative chant music. While the balcony seat offered a great view of the acrobatics, I didn’t see myself getting emotionally invested in the spectacle. MOMIX’s acrobatics were technically impressive, yet emotionally hollow.
The group’s modus operandi is a show consisting of multiple vignettes, each independent of the others. Each vignette centers on a single prop or acrobatic trick. This format lends itself well to the greatest hits format they utilized during Sunday’s show, where each scene lasted no more than six or seven minutes. The show felt fast-paced as the dancers moved abruptly from one scene to the next — a style that showcased the dancers’ technical skill, but failed to move me beyond that.
MOMIX’s acrobatics were technically impressive, yet emotionally hollow.
The individual vignettes never added up to something greater. When I watch a dance performance, I expect to feel some emotional connection to the performer. While MOMIX kept me entertained on a visual level, there were no emotional stakes. When Pendelton attempts to represent images from nature with human forms onstage, he asks: What can a dancer become? The answers are literal: a flower, a hornet, a cowboy riding a horse, a solar flare, and so on. The depictions, though, feature more artificial, human-made props than natural elements.
Take “Daddy Long Legs,” for instance: the male dancers wore one-legged stilts hidden under their chaps, complete with cowboy hats to top off the ensemble. The western scene proceeded aided by the stilt at every moment. The dancers mimed horse-riding and galloping motions by skipping and jumping using the length of the stilt. I was amazed by the acrobatics on display: spinning while balanced on the stilt, executing leg sweeps and kicks, and spinning the cowboy hat on the stilt. In a mimed shootout, the stilts became pistols. The dancers brought a playful enthusiasm that almost made me smile.
Another scene, “Marigolds,” featured three female dancers dressed as flowers. The costumes covered their torsos and heads initially, forming a marvelously realistic human flower. As the dance continued, the costume blossoms wilted, falling to the dancers’ feet. As the dancers spun around, the frills looked like the brushes in a car wash — not quite the graceful image the clever costuming promised. Other scenes similarly focused on a single visual trick or prop: suggestively positioned glowing wands in “Light Reigns,” belly dance-inspired movements and white sheets in “Baths of Caracalla” and rhythmic jumping and spandex costumes in “A Nest of Hornets.”
The most ambitious scene was “Paper Trails.” The dancers manipulated rolls of paper, upon which images were projected. The scenery felt chaotic and cluttered, and the projected scribbles resembled a Jackson Pollock painting from a distance. Once unfurled, the paper ribbons oscillated up and down like jump ropes. As the scene progressed, the dancers wrapped themselves up in the ribbons. In the climax of the scene, the dancers formed a giant paper ball that inched off-stage with the grace of an elephant. The projected backdrops ranged from intriguing to distracting, especially when they obscured the dancers. Altogether, the image resembled the contents of an office wastebasket.
In the final scene, “Solar Flares,” the dancers wriggled around orange foam cylinders to an Afro-style drum beat. To me, the movements evoked less of the sun than the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The pool-noodle solar flare felt artificial. So did the earlier spandex-clad hornets and the light-up wands. The music was distressingly full of electronic bass sounds, and the foreign-sounding elements like sitar and African drumbeats seem to serve only as auditory texture instead of connecting with the movements. The continuous onslaught of repetitive motions set to thumping, pulsing electronic beats felt more robotic than organic. This array of visual spectacles failed to deliver genuine emotional impact.
Perhaps MOMIX is not dance in the traditional sense. It is instead a blend of the acrobatic and the artistic, and it should be judged on its own merits. To its credit, I was consistently impressed by the grace and fluidity of the dancers’ spins and jumps. I almost found myself drawn into Pendelton’s artificial world, but the artistic elements of the choreography failed to engage me. Dance can be much more compelling when you feel an emotion behind it. MOMIX delivered a spectacle, but not much else when the synthetic props and gymnastics lacked passion and warmth. Perhaps that’s enough for some audiences.
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It’s nice that one can write so eloquently about their feelings (or lack thereof) – the authors esteemed sibling <3