“What is poetry but dance in motion? What is dance, but poetry in motion?” Moses Pendleton, the founder of contemporary dance company Momix says.
Indeed his choreographed pieces, covering themes ranging from spring, to birth, to an ode to the American southwest, attempt to do what poetry does, to capture the often ethereal moments of life and to express the inchoate sensations and moments of passing beauty.
The romantic poetry graduate is inspired by nature. Pendleton reveals that he’s “always been interested in seeing how the human makes contact or attempts to make contact with the non-human.” His piece, Botanica, is a series of vignettes capturing the emergence of spring.
Dancers imitate the giddy flowers and playful insects. They emerge from a field of snow as tentative shoots, twirl with a fickle dance of light, and close their petals at the end of the show. Indeed, the hours that Pendleton admits to spending in the garden each day observing, photographing, and filming come through in his work: a tribute to re-birth and the new year.
The dance company has been frequently described by “illusion” and “fantasy,” as its mixture of light, costume, and a new-age eastern hip-hop music define the company as both strange and magical. Momix is simultaneously a theatrical performance, a visual poem, and an ode to nature. The company will be performing Bontanica in Washington D.C. this April; in the mean time, enjoy the promo video of the performance here.
