Momix

You could sum up the work of the genius stagecrafter and choreographer Moses Pendleton by saying he exceeds the influence of such peers as Alwin Nikolais, Elizabeth Streb, Mummenschanz, and Pilobolus, the now-41-year-old company he cofounded, then left in 1983 to form MOMIX. His inventiveness and artistry far surpass the popular Cirque du Soleil. A Dance Celebration favorite, MOMIX opened at the Annenberg Center on Thursday night to a nearly full house with its show "reMIX. " Instead of one of his evening-length works, Pendleton offered an exotic caravan of pieces — some new, some familiar — that drew oohs, aahs, and scatterings of applause throughout.

This review of Momix is written from a disadvantaged perspective. I have seen the group before. Many times before as a matter of fact, but how many makes no difference. Twice is enough. Momix, which Dance Celebration brought back to the Annenberg Center last night after a couple of years' absence, rides on what the company calls illusionist theater and what others would call sight gags. Sight gags are a special kind of breed. Unlike magic tricks, for instance, which depend on the magician's timing, sight gags don't need people to make them tick.

Passion can mean intense feeling or the suffering of saints. The one thing it does not mean is diddling around with hoops. Yet hoop-play and variations thereof are the mainstays of Passion, a full-evening piece choreographed by Moses Pendleton and being performed by Momix at the Annenberg Center this afternoon and tonight. Perhaps the main reason that Passion is so called is because the music, by Peter Gabriel, is from the movie The Last Temptation of Christ. The choreography, however, is basically a compendium of previous pieces by Momix and the company it grew out of, Pilobolus.

You've heard of sleight of hand: tricks magicians do with their hands that are so artfully deceptive you wonder, "How did they do that?" Momix goes the concept one better, presenting what might be described as sleight of body. The members of this troupe contort themselves in seemingly impossible ways. At times they act like dolls whose joints are attached with elastic string. Or they use lighting and screens to create shadow effects making their bodies look like Rorschach cards come to life.

"Momix in Orbit" shows choreographer Moses Pendleton's popular company in greatest-hits mode. The Connecticut-based Momix culled a string of pieces from its 20-year repertory for its current Annenberg Center run, with excerpts from longer works and none that was newer than two years old. The title is a good clue: There's a lot of testing of gravity, some quasi-flight and celestial imagery here. In Thursday night's program's best works, Pendleton and crew elicit wonder with the simply conceived visual magic for which they are known.

Moses Pendleton - the farm boy from outer space who got his start choreographing a hillside dance for 50 dairy cows - brings his sly and sexy Momix dance company into the Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut St., tonight for a three-day, four-performance run as part of Dance Celebration. Pendleton and his pals will do a mating dance on skis and a gravity- defying leap of faith on a bizarre, potentially dangerous contraption called a Circle Walker. They will do one new number called "Kiss Off Spiderwoman" and another one called "Venus Envy" involving two women in a giant clam shell.

Dance Celebration, the touring program designed to provide audiences with a chance to sample new dance as well as catch up with more familiar companies, begins its eighth season at the Annenberg Center this week running true to form. Tonight, it opens with a much-anticipated one-night performance by the Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre. New to Philadelphia audiences, the Holmes company has a big rep for audience-pleasing jazzy modern dance with an African flavor. Then the series segues into a five-day run, starting Wednesday, of the slightly mad outfit called Momix.

There's quirky. And then there's The Best of Momix. Athletic, daring, wildly creative and masters of many types of movement, the dancers of Momix are celebrating the company's 25th anniversary with a retrospective of 13 short pieces this week at the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Theatre. (The program also marks the close of the 25th anniversary season of Dance Celebration, which brings high-quality performances to Philadelphia audiences.) A 90-minute concert without intermission, The Best of Momix flows from one offbeat offering to another.

Rebecca Stenn may come with a Pilobolus via Momix pedigree - she danced with Momix for five years - but her PerksDanceMusicTheatre is no Momix knockoff. Last night's sold-out performance with the NextMove Festival showed her to be a choreographer of generous vision, and a great dancer herself. The evening offered one gem after another of visual and movement imagination, all accompanied by an onstage music ensemble led by Stenn's partner, Nico Abondolo. The first work, "Candlepiece," set the stage.

When you go to see choreography by Moses Pendleton, artistic director and founder of Momix, you expect to be astonished. His full-length piece Botanica, which received its Philadelphia premiere in a performance by Momix on Thursday night at the Annenberg Center, has astonishment to spare. As its name implies, this work was inspired by nature; it consists of four sections, roughly corresponding to the seasons. Raised on a Vermont dairy farm, Pendleton has always been deeply interested in animals, plants, insects, and weather.

You could sum up the work of the genius stagecrafter and choreographer Moses Pendleton by saying he exceeds the influence of such peers as Alwin Nikolais, Elizabeth Streb, Mummenschanz, and Pilobolus, the now-41-year-old company he cofounded, then left in 1983 to form MOMIX. His inventiveness and artistry far surpass the popular Cirque du Soleil. A Dance Celebration favorite, MOMIX opened at the Annenberg Center on Thursday night to a nearly full house with its show "reMIX. " Instead of one of his evening-length works, Pendleton offered an exotic caravan of pieces — some new, some familiar — that drew oohs, aahs, and scatterings of applause throughout.

Saturday Rolling on the river Saturday is Delaware River Day at Penn's Landing, marking the start of summer, traditionally when hundreds of boaters put their vessels in the water. Free River Day events are planned noon to 6 p.m. at the landing's marina behind Independence Seaport Museum on Columbus Boulevard near Walnut Street. There will be free tours of the McFarland, one of four oceangoing hopper dredges owned by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Delaware River Day Tug Fest, from 2 to 3 p.m., will be off the South Quay at the marina, and it will include the McAllister Tug, the Moran Tug, the K-Sea Tug, and the Tug Jupiter (2009 winner for "best decorated")

When you go to see choreography by Moses Pendleton, artistic director and founder of Momix, you expect to be astonished. His full-length piece Botanica, which received its Philadelphia premiere in a performance by Momix on Thursday night at the Annenberg Center, has astonishment to spare. As its name implies, this work was inspired by nature; it consists of four sections, roughly corresponding to the seasons. Raised on a Vermont dairy farm, Pendleton has always been deeply interested in animals, plants, insects, and weather.

Not everything went swimmingly when the dance troupe BodyVox opened Water Bodies at the Annenberg's Zellerbach Theatre on Thursday night. There were technical difficulties and mistakes nearly from the start: Video wouldn't play; sound volume and quality were inconsistent; dancers missed steps. But the Portland, Ore., group's suite of modern dances paying homage to H2O is so charming, funny, and inventive that the flaws hardly mattered. The evening opens with co-artistic director Jamey Hampton testing the waters and dancing in a bathtub.

Also Worth a Look A transplant from Portland, Maine, former 20-year Ballet Tech principal dancer and new mother Buffy Miller has carved out a solo career here. On Sept. 26 she's showing Love Songs, in the intimate Stillhouse, the 31-seat theater her husband built for her in West Mount Airy. For reservations and info, 267-297-1588. Breaking out from dancing for many other local artists, Jumatatu Poe on Oct. 3 will premiere his own Flatland with 11 performers and dance his solo The Flight Attendant at the Performance Garage.

The 16 dance numbers in the 2009 Garden State Dance Festival's two-weekend run at Rutgers-Camden's Walter K. Gordon Theater offer a kaleidoscopic glimpse of what emerging dancers can do when matched with established choreographers. Several of the works in last weekend's opener were highly polished, mobile - and as colorful as stained glass. They ranged in genres from ballet to boogie, pas de deux to large ensemble. Among the best works - and repeating tomorrow - is Camille A. Brown's excerpt from her larger one-woman piece, The Evolution of a Secured Feminine.

There's quirky. And then there's The Best of Momix. Athletic, daring, wildly creative and masters of many types of movement, the dancers of Momix are celebrating the company's 25th anniversary with a retrospective of 13 short pieces this week at the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Theatre. (The program also marks the close of the 25th anniversary season of Dance Celebration, which brings high-quality performances to Philadelphia audiences.) A 90-minute concert without intermission, The Best of Momix flows from one offbeat offering to another.

The Philadelphia-based company ArcheDream is performing The Poet's Dream this week at the Harold Prince Theatre of the Annenberg Center. Supported by Penn Presents, it is part of an optimistic new initiative called the Philadelphia Presenting Project that offers local talent a chance to perform in the professional space. While the group does have some professional aspects - lighting, elaborate costumes, a decent program - to call ArcheDream a dance-theater company (as it labels itself)

Dance Celebration/Next Move's series is well into its seventh-inning stretch for this season. It loads the bases with Pucci: Sport - which, depending on your predilection, is either a sports-based evening of dance or a dance-based evening of sport. It's a short enough program to take preteens to on a school night. And whether they're named Jill or Jack, I think they'll be charmed by it. It opened Tuesday at the Annenberg Center and runs through Saturday night. A nine-year veteran of Pilobolus, Peter Pucci formed his own company, Peter Pucci Plus Dancers, in 1986.

"Momix in Orbit" shows choreographer Moses Pendleton's popular company in greatest-hits mode. The Connecticut-based Momix culled a string of pieces from its 20-year repertory for its current Annenberg Center run, with excerpts from longer works and none that was newer than two years old. The title is a good clue: There's a lot of testing of gravity, some quasi-flight and celestial imagery here. In Thursday night's program's best works, Pendleton and crew elicit wonder with the simply conceived visual magic for which they are known.