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MOMIX Ultimate Date Event and the Best of MOMIX at Lenfest Center

The Lenfest Center for the Arts at Washington and Lee University will present the MOMIX Ultimate Date event on Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 8:30 p.m. in the Keller Theatre, Lenfest Center. During this performance the audience will have the unique opportunity to be on stage with the dancers.The Best of MOMIX will be Nov. 11, at 8:30 p.m. in the Keller Theatre.

This intimacy creates a cutting-edge interactive event that bridges the gap between dancer and audience by merging the two. Tickets for the MOMIX Ultimate Date can be purchased online at lenfest.wlu.edu or by calling the Box Office at (540) 458-8000.

In addition to the MOMIX Ultimate Date, Lenfest presents the Best of MOMIX on Wednesday, Nov. 11, at 8 p.m. in the Keller Theatre. Best of MOMIX assembles a quarter century of choreographic highlights from the celebrated dance troupe’s repertoire – Lunar Sea, Opus Cactus, Baseball and other full-length works. Tickets for Best of MOMIX also can be purchased online at lenfest.wlu.edu or by calling the Box Office at (540) 458-8000.

2008 with the performance of the Cedar Lake Ballet Company, an edgy contemporary danceroupe from New York City, and continued in 2009 with the arrival of Lula Washington and her dancers from the West Coast. The MOMIX event rounds out the Ultimate Date experience with an intimate evening of illusion and dance followed by a champagne reception that offers the audience the opportunity to meet Moses Pendleton and the MOMIX Company in person.

The live performances of MOMIX are astonishing and unique unto themselves, yet the opportunity to interact so closely with the dancers takes their characteristic skill for blending the physical elements of light, space, sound, and movement to the next level.

MOMIX repeatedly blurs the fine line between illusion and reality with mind-blowing inventiveness; athletic dancers fool the naked eye with an amazing array of black-light illusions, acrobatic choreography and fantastical props. The troupe of performers takes arabesques and pirouettes beyond the limit in performances that a New York Times critic recently noted, “defy the impossible.”

Moses Pendleton, the choreographer and founder of MOMIX, is known for his creative work and dazzling vision. As he puts it, he likes to “go into the studio and set it on fire with possibilities and see what the dancers do. I’m already torching the place.”

Pendleton, also Pilobolus/Aeros co-founder, has worked with numerous dance companies of varying types. He has choreographed for ballet companies, modern companies, music videos, movies in the U.S. and in Europe, and even dairy cows to create different works for the public. Throughout all of his work and his life, he operates on a philosophy of possibility.

As Pendleton says, “If you want to find material with dancers you have to free them up with possibilities.” When choreographing, he says that while he may have an idea of what potential hides in the dancers, it cannot be forced.

“It is a process of revealing what is there instead of actually creating it. It is more than telling them what to do, it is getting them willing, and giving them the confidence and the freedom to discover and react to the imagery so that they can respond to it intelligent and naturally and make it their own. And that is part of the collaborative process. That is how anything gets done.”