big aluminum pretzel
tonight paul and i went to burlington and saw a dance performance by momix. props they used included, but were not limited to:
One of the largest props in Opus Cactus is a three-dimensional sculpture designed to support the full weight of multiple bodies. Developed by company members Berman and Brian Sanders in their “free time” after rehearsals, Dream Catcher incorporates the structure. The piece gives a hypnotic look at the ebb and flow of weight as dancers counterbalance one another. Like a warped jungle gym, the sculpture consists of rounded poles pieced together to form an object that rocks, rolls and rotates across the stage while dancers hang, swing, pull and push from it.luckily many of the pieces they performed were in triplicate: three dancers spread out across the stage moving in unison. the man seated in front of me had an unusually large head, and however i craned my neck i could see only half of the stage at any one time. i tried staring very intently at the back of his skull, but i could not make his head explode, no matter how hard i tried.Berman and Sanders say they realized the potential for this structure after finding it in Pendleton’s yard—left there in 1991 by Alan Boeding, who has built a number of movement sculptures for the company. “Over the years different dancers have played on the sculpture,” Berman says, “but Brian and I wanted to create a complete dance.” One evening over pizza, the two got to work. They laid out an outline structure of the vocabulary and then went back to the studio to set their movement to music. “From there we began to tweak the piece into its current form,” Berman says.
Wonder how they travel with such a structure? Says Berman: “MOMIX has been touring with sculptures for years. The Dream Catcher sculpture is not only designed to dance on, but also to be taken on tour. It disassembles to a relatively small size.”