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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, April 13, 2003

DANCE REVIEW
Momix is full of surprises

By Ana Paula Höfling

Since the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Outreach College joined forces with Tim Bostock productions, Honolulu has hosted several top-notch, innovative dance companies.

Momix dance troupe's newest production, "Opus Cactus," depicts the creatures and landscapes of the American Southwest. Momix performs this afternoon at Hawai'i Theatre.

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This time this production team has brought Momix to the Hawai'i Theatre, a company directed by Pilobolus co-founder Moses Pendleton, bringing their new evening-length work "Opus Cactus."

A collection of vignettes connected only by Pendleton's unique style and a loose desert theme, "Opus Cactus" evades definition: Although Pendleton uses ballet-trained dancers to create his moving illusions, he is interested in pirouettes and leaps only if these technical feats contribute to his visual design.

At times, "Opus Cactus" is closer to a theatrical circus performance (like Cirque Eloize, seen at the Hawai'i Theater earlier this year) than to what one would traditionally expect in a dance performance — it foregrounds virtuosity and favors visual spectacle over narrative, theme or any deeper message.

Using lights, props, and the flexibility, strength and accuracy of his dancer's bodies, Pendleton turns the stage into a kaleidoscope, where colorful shapes and angular silhouettes are even more intriguing because they appear to not be human.

Momix
  • "Opus Cactus"
  • 2 p.m. today
  • Hawai'i Theatre
  • $17-$35
  • 528-0506
Transforming human bodies into lizards, snakes, ostriches and other hopping, wiggling, sometimes headless creatures seems to be Pendleton's signature.

Four men dressed in red unitards, their heads between one another's legs, wiggle across the stage, rippling their bodies sequentially, creating the illusion of a segmented reptile. Several sets of legs, which appear to have no torso or head attached to them, hop across the stage in silhouette. Ostriches are created from women's torsos and men's legs and birdlike women balance high up on poles.

But not all images of this show are about creating strange animals.

The show opens with "Sonoran: But Not Asleep," where a woman, backed by a starlit night, is wrapped in a hammock that hangs from bungee cords. She swings, lazily at first, turning and twisting inside the hammock, then gently dropping to the floor and gracefully springing back up.

In "Dream Catcher," two dancers skillfully float in and around a large metal structure shaped like a figure eight as if there was no gravity.

Although some of the vignettes do not go beyond their original idea and could have been developed further, "Opus Cactus" is an entertaining visual spectacle full of surprises and clever ideas.