Moses Pendleton, Momix’s Human Kaleidoscope : Dance-theater: The wily choreographer “softens up the beachhead” for his seven-member company.

Moses Pendleton can’t help but be deceiving. Or double-edged. After all, he is the personification of trompe l’oeil .

Now you see--and understand--him, now you don’t.

A human kaleidoscope of sorts--first he co-founded Pilobolus, an antic zoo of a dance-theater collective, then he spawned Momix, an offshoot of the original--the wily performer keeps reinventing himself.

On this afternoon, for instance, with Momix set for a four-night stand at the Wiltern starting tonight, Pendleton tries to grab a few ebbing rays of sun poolside at the Hotel Bel Air--not the usual digs for a choreographer whose seven-member troupe typically plays the low-scale college circuit.

He stretches out on a chaise lounge, determined to gain a California tan and, at the same time, talk to the media.

But the compact 40-year-old--who sports a black bikini, lots of silver rings, a brush-cut and goatee that point up his resemblance to Vincent van Gogh’s self-portrait--is restive. He talks in a torrent of free associations and playful puns.

“Pale fire,” he mutters, referring to the dimming sun and Nabokov’s novel, while showing little sign of jet lag from his last destination, Rome. No matter that it is 3 p.m. and he has been conducting nonstop interviews since 11 a.m., with no end in sight before 8.

There are things to do, and actual swans to contemplate at the hotel--they glide about the mini-lake of this sylvan paradise. But he doesn’t let pleasure (with a room that sets him back by $300 a day) interfere with the publicity process, even though he bolts from time to time for a fast spin on Mulholland in his rented Mazda convertible with surround-sound earphones in the headrest.

“I’m self-producing the Wiltern engagement,” he says, sliding over to a chair, wrapping himself in a hooded terry robe (now he looks like Gandhi) and sipping an espresso. “It’s costing $75,000 up front, so this militaristic approach to publicity--my softening up the beachhead--is important.”

Equally important, however, are the various deals Pendleton is trying to negotiate. While in Rome, appearing with his partner, Cynthia Quinn, on a program called “Stars of the International Ballet,” he met with film director Lina Wertmuller.

Movies are definitely in the picture these days. Pendleton provided choreography for Prince’s “Batman” video and, a few years ago, the Julian Lennon video “Too Late for Goodbyes.”

“I’m working on stories now,” he says, borrowing as a pun the title of Oscar Levant’s book “Memoirs of an Amnesiac.” (Others, of his own devising, include “Venus Envy,” on the Wiltern bill, and “Debut C,” subtitled “Afternoon of a Prawn,” a Pilobolus premiere coming to Royce Hall in February.)

When Pendleton points to the Marx Brothers and theatrical revolutionary Antonin Artaud as his lifelong influences, he gives a clear clue not only to what Pilobolus and Momix are but also the other creative directions he takes.

Of course, his dossier itself reflects an unusual scope, as do his many and diverse prizes. At the time that the Russian avant-garde director Yuri Lyubimov went to see Momix in Milan (1981), he was getting ready to stage “Khovanshchina” for La Scala Opera.

“Inspired, I suppose, by what he saw,” says Pendleton, “he had this intense idea to add me to the libretto as a silent character called Mimo. In fact, I was threaded from scene to scene and the Italian press was scandalized. ‘What is this Woody Allen character doing in the middle of “Khovanshchina?” they wanted to know.’ ”

But a year later the Deutsche Oper of Berlin commissioned him to choreograph and perform in “Tutuguri,” Wolfgang Bihm’s opera about Artaud exorcising demons by way of peyote. And then for four consecutive years there has been Italy’s RAI television, with a whole sequence of Pendleton specials for the network.

Of his different experiences, the Dartmouth graduate (English literature) quips: “I’m just a kebab on a skewer, but I must be more obscure.”

And he is. But somewhere in the course of germinating ideas and carrying them out he gets caught in what seems like a contradiction. The modus operandi of Pilobolus and Momix has been collaborative, with members freely bouncing off each other’s whimsy.

Inevitably, though, they suffer creative collisions--thus explaining the constant change of personnel. Both companies, as though composed of megaspore mother cells that divide and multiply, “keep needing more space and oxygen,” he says.

“Or, to put it in different terms: There should be an eruption every 10 years. That way we have new lava formations. Reading them is the most fun of all. These swans, for instance, could they be telling me to propose something to the Joffrey Ballet?”

If so, “Swan Lake” will probably never be the same.