Passion by Momix at Aotea Centre

'Passion', seen in this publicity shot, is a Momix 'classic', but seems dated.

Momix claims Passion as a classic and signature piece. It was created 15 years ago, but seems even more dated.

Limbs Dance Company was doing similarly kinky, clever and quirky things in the late 70s - albeit on a smaller, less well-lit and unadorned scale. Bare breasts and liberated buttocks were de rigueur then, too.

Strip Passion of its lighting effects, which do create a modicum of magic, and subtract the huge projected images that play on a full scrim permanently stretched in front of the dancers, and what is left is a curiously mixed bag.

What the five dancers do is something less than dance, if you define that as body poetry. It's more akin to acrobatics with some of the slow beauty of an advanced physical yoga practice - without the internalisation.

Choreographer Moses Pendleton states that he uses his dancers' bodies and his wardrobe of props to create moving pictures. Move they certainly do, but with no reflection of the dancers' own souls.

Combined with Peter Gabriel's score for the Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ, it all makes for a moderate spectacle, with a slightly psychedelic aura, mildly hypnotic rather than compelling and in no way following a religious, as in Christian, theme.

The first of the giant projections, most of which baffle with their beauty rather than add meaning, is of a tree, symbolic of the tree of life, and the work begins with curious scuttling creatures.

It slowly progresses up the evolutionary ranks and is less successful as it goes. While the early pieces bring chuckles and hoots of approval, by the time we get to the three women, bare-breasted again but swathed in metres of white tulle to evoke some celestial aspiration, the effect is unpleasantly banal.

Momix has three different shows playing on the international circuit and the varied standard of performance in this Passion leads to the suspicion that this might be a more junior troupe. The two male dancers were pretty terrific, two of the three women were more than adequate for the task, the final one not really up to scratch at all.

Move on, Momix, if you can.

Review

*What: Passion by Momix
*Where: Aotea Centre
*Reviewer: Bernadette Rae