MOMIX ‘Botanica’ — an ‘alchemical trip’ of dance and illusion

Moses Pendleton wants to blow your mind with MOMIX, his company of “dancer-illusionists.”

“You should always expect the unexpected,” says the choreographer, who formed the globally renowned modern dance company in 1981. “Even our name — mo-mix — is no one particular thing. What we do is an alchemical distillation of intriguing lighting, props, sound and movement.”

One of MOMIX’s most popular shows, “Botanica,” will be onstage at Macky Auditorium on the CU-Boulder campus Nov. 8, part of the Artist Series.

With its ethereal lighting, mesmerizing special effects and mind-bending movement, the work “can be enjoyed … for its high illusion-making skill and for the strength of its athletic, interchangeable dancers. It can be diverting to figure out how they do it,” writes the New York Times.

“Botanica,” Pendleton says, is not so much a story as it is the development of a theme, working with the unique MOMIX style to cycle through the change of the four seasons in New England.

“The imagery arises from the dead of winter, the buds of spring, summer storms and the falling leaves of autumn, in a repeating, evocative cycle,” he says. “If people walk out with a little less gravity in their step, it’s successful.”

The dancers become marigolds and sunflowers and trees bending in the wind. They may inhabit a pack of centaurs, melting snowdrifts and plants rising from the earth to meet the spring sun, or find themselves dancing with the bones of an ancient saurian.

“Botanica,” in other words, is full of MOMIX’s patented optical illusions and confusion, Pendleton says: “It will get the rust off your dendrites. It will take you on a trip that’s visually stimulating and full of poetry. In a sometimes down world, it’s an ‘up’ experience.”

“Botanica,” a work by MOMIX modern-dance company

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20

WHERE: Macky Auditorium, University of Colorado Boulder campus

TICKETS: $20 and up

INFO: cupresents.org or call 303-492-8008