I saw Momix on Sunday night with some friends. The show was beautiful, using black screens with the dancers and puppets illuminated under UV light. The performance, was technically brilliant, once you figured out the trick the show was more of a one trick pony than anything meaningful.
Both sections were performed behind a scrim onto which director Moses Pendleton projected a range of images from lunar scenes through to flowers and people in a kaleidoscopic split screen unfolding, which distanced the dancers even further from the audience but also helped conceal some of the technique behind its artistry.
On paper I should have really loved this, the acrobatics were spectacular and the light effects were amazing but for the most part I spent the show trying to figure out exactly how they were doing what they were doing, in between moments of nearly falling asleep. There was just something so soothing about the dark theatre, neon lights and the very fat baseline, combined with the after effects of the tagine and wine from dinner that made me drift off intermittently throughout the first act. I think that the show was so technically interesting that I was intrigued more by its construction rather than being awed by its beauty.
I think that the best theatre makes you feel something, even if only a sense of wonder at seeing something beautiful. However, I didn’t really get a sense of that at Lunar Sea, and the problem is there is nothing specific that I can put my finger on and say that is what was wrong with it. Perhaps the show relied on its one trick for too long. The brief time the show deviated from the neon effect was probably the most engaged I felt with the performance, which could be down to the fact that it was the only point in the show I could see their faces.
Momix’s dancers are technically strong, flexible and very athletic but the show focuses too much on the gimmikery of the lights rather than the beauty of the dance.