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Momix visual theater event 'Lunar Sea' brings a 'Fantasia'-like experience to region Date published: 1/18/2007
By MICHAEL ZITZ Audiences often react anxiously as they watch performers float impossibly through the air during "Lunar Sea," which flows from the fertile imagination of artistic director Moses Pendleton. The visual theater performance combines former jock Pendleton's acrobatic choreography with puppets by "The Lion King" creator Michael Curry, lighting that creates the illusion of flight, and a surreal lunar landscape. Tonight at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville, and Saturday and Sunday at the George Mason University Center for the Arts in Fairfax, audiences will see what it might be like to dance across the surface of the moon. Pendleton uses black light to make male performers disappear and female ones appear to float. That, he said, turns the male dancers into "puppeteers." The illusion creates a sense that computerized special effects are being used. He's known for the humor in his productions. In the case of "Lunar Sea," "It's more surprise and a certain wonderment--it's almost perplexing in a way," Pendleton said. "It's interesting to watch audiences' reactions to this piece." Sometimes, he said, the audience seems to feel genuine anxiety about the possibility of the dancers plummeting to the floor. "The audience seems to be thinking about how you're doing it, not what you're doing," Pendleton said. He grew up on a dairy farm in northern Vermont, and the idea for "Lunar Sea" sprang from the idea of a giant black-and-white Holstein cow jumping over the moon. "I couldn't get any of the dancers to want to be part of the Holstein," he said with a chuckle. The inspiration for "Lunar Sea," he said, was "what it would it be like to have a dance on the moon, to fly and soar." He said he wanted audiences "to have a feeling they were watching something completely different." The dancers seem to be defying gravity. "I basically took this kind of approach where I erased all visible means of support," Pendleton punned. "No visible means of support" is a subtitle to the show, he said.
Date published: 1/18/2007
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