By Montague Gammon III
Virginia Arts Festival’s entrancing presentation of MOMIX: Alice hits all the marks for dance and theater fans, for people who delight in beauty of all sorts, for parents who want to entertain offspring – provided mom and dad do not mind being begged for dance lessons for days and days to come – and for just anyone who loves a good show of jaw dropping loveliness, mind-boggling visuals and remarkable athleticism.
This is what CGI wishes it could be if it grows up.
“Alice” is probably the best way we will ever see, unless MOMIX returns with something else, to give anyone of any age a first taste of the wonders of artistic dance (even if they think they don’t like dance). Then they can move on to Mark Morris, Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Joffrey and such.
For those who have seem some dance, or lots and lots of it, MOMIX provides something quite different, in its fascinating and outer-limits striving entertainment, with a hint of Pilobolus at its genesis.
Back in 1971, nine or ten years before MOMIX saw the lights of the stage, MOMIX founder and artistic director Moses Pendleton had been a co-founder of Pilobolus, with its self-proclaimed emphases on “group creativity” and “test[ing] the limits of human physicality to explore the beauty and the power of connected bodies.”
Now Pendleton is using dancers rather like a painter uses paint, enhanced by the elements of his acrobatic medium providing welcomed input in a collaborative creation.
In YouTube preserved interviews, Pendleton commented on his means of creation and its desired end:
The company prepares “in a atmosphere of play….we take our play very seriously. It’s a language of the body, it’s a language of light, it’s a language of music. MOMIX offers people an escape. For two hours they can just go and fall into MOMIX land.”
“Alice is a natural fit for MOMIX and an opportunity for us to extend our reach. I want to take this show into places we haven’t been before in terms of the fusion of dancing, lighting, music, costumes, and projected imagery…Audiences will be taken on a journey that is both magical, mysterious, fun, eccentric, and much more. As Alice falls down the rabbit hole and experiences every kind of transformation, so will you.”
One of his dancers, again on YouTube, said “Moses’s vision is a lot about making the impossible come to life on stage and bringing these magical elements that people leave wondering how did that happen, or how were they able to do that with their bodies?”
MOMIX: Alice is not a narrative retelling of Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories, but dance that finds its inspiration and starting point in Carroll’s pair of pre-surrealist fantasy tales. The familiar characters are there in 22 scenes: the Mad Hatter, the Mad Queen, Mock Turtle, Caterpillar and more , and of course Alice, who not only grows and shrinks but along with the Rabbit, multiplies herself as well.
Music is sourced from Danny Elfman (film, classical), Franz Ferdinand (Scottish rock), Anna Tijoux (Latin pop, hip-hop & rap), along with Indian and even Wild West music and, of course, Gracie and her Airplane.
What the company does is spectacular in the best sense of the word. It’s not just Busby Berkeley or Rockettes mirror image rhythmic symmetry, but richly colored, three dimensional, height and elevation inclusive, lights being the true magic of theater spectacular; the human body creating wonderful and dynamic, indelibly memorable images spectacular.
The MOMIX home page quotes the Wall Street Journal: “MOMIX’s ALICE fills the stage with a marvelously dizzying flow of physical activities and illusions amid expansive, artful projections.” Chicago reviewer Alan Bresloff called MOMIX:Alice “eye candy par excellence…a technicolor masterpiece.”
WANT TO GO?
MOMIX: Alice
Moses Pendleton, Artistic Director
Presented by Virginia Arts Festival
7:30 p.m., Wed., April 2, Chrysler Hall, Norfolk
7:30 p.m., Fri., April 4, Ferguson Center for the Arts, Newport News
757-282-2822
