Momix Dancers Leap and Spin Their Way Into ‘Orbit’

What sunflowers are to Van Gogh, props, trance dancing and buttocks are to Moses Pendleton, founder, creative director and choreographer of Momix, the audacious dance company celebrating its 20th anniversary. Oh, yes: Pendleton, too, has a fondness for sunflowers, and this penchant was explored in two eminently entertaining programs in two venues last week.

On Thursday at Pepperdine’s Smothers Theatre, the troupe presented “Momix in Orbit,” a 12-part compilation of old and new works that included three Los Angeles premieres. “Discman” (1999), featuring Michael Curry’s huge puppet, had Craig Berman deftly manipulating the E.T.-like creature into bows, plies and spins, much to the joy of the sold-out audience.

“Pleiades” (1999), performed by Kori Darling, Jane’l Caropolo, Nicole Loizides and Cynthia Quinn, was a journey into the heavens--a wondrous acid trip--with the dancers undulating exotically with pliable hoops amid Joshua Starbuck’s star-shot lighting.

“Sputnik (Fellow Traveler),” from 1997, featured Yasmine Lee sitting lotus-style on a brass bowl that tips from side to side, as Berman and Brian Simerson wielded poles that morphed from spears into spokes. The female quartet from “Pleiades” spun, dipped and glided, pushing the spokes (jutting from Lee’s perch) at varying speeds while remaining suspended from them.

Saturday at Glendale’s Alex Theatre, Pendleton presented his previously reviewed 1991 epic, “Passion,” a 75-minute, 21-part opus that encompasses the evolution of man. Set to taped excerpts from Peter Gabriel’s score for the Martin Scorsese film “The Last Temptation of Christ,” this “Passion” is a phantasmagorical blend of Walt Disney and Cirque du Soleil.

Performed to the backdrop of Pendleton’s slide projections, and behind a gossamer scrim, this work flows from religious imagery (hanging monks) to nature (Pendleton’s beloved sunflowers dissolve into soldiers’ faces), with the human form, in all of its rippling--and ripped--glory, at the heart of the piece: Dancers with heads down and buttocks up are walking abstractions; leaping creatures become umbrella-spinning sprites; acrobatics rule as Lee, Loizides, Quinn and Simerson, joined by Joshua Cohen, create a marvelous universe of shapes and moods. Veiled women sidle through dry ice; virtuosic rope swings yield a bounty of endurance and grace.