Music and Dance Reviews : Momix Warhorses at Saddleback College

Momix, the 10-year-old company of dance illusionists, is starting to look like Mo-formula. In a bill full of warhorses from their 1975-88 repertory Saturday at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, repeated motifs made a once-innovative style seem as tired as the dancers themselves.

Like artistic director Moses Pendleton’s first company, Pilobolus, Momix combines fantasy themes, strange beasts and large props together with an athletic if unspectacular modern-dance vocabulary.

Among the familiar works, the interludes that held up best were the ones with few or no props: “Kiss Off Spider Woman” (1986), an authoritative solo featuring a game Beth Starosta; Cynthia Quinn’s gestural “Bird in My Dreams” (1987); and “Alruane” (1975), a seemingly Indian-inspired duet in which Karl Baumann and Starosta interacted so well it was difficult to tell which limbs belonged to which dancer.

Alan Boeding’s “Circle Walker” (1983), a duet for the choreographer-dancer-sculptor and a large, rolling metal device, was cramped on the mid-size stage, but managed nonetheless to suggest human turmoil.

“Spawning” (1986), on the other hand, a nature parable in which three nearly naked women (Lisa Giobbi, Quinn and Starosta) danced with huge balloons between their legs, was riddled with formulaic movement.

Other gimmick dances--such as “Venus Envy” (1986), with its two women inside a giant clam shell, or the life-size partner puppet of Quinn’s “When We’re Alone” (1988)--remained no more than visual one-liners.

Last and perhaps least, for those who like high-tech shadow puppets, there was Momix’s sign-off, “E. C.” (1982), an extended scrim and strobe routine, heavy on the cute and more than a little dated.