Passion, with Momix dance company at Aotea Centre

Momix weaves a spectacular tapestry of sensuality.

Choreographer Moses Pendleton - founder of the startlingly physical theatre company Momix, which performs its signature work Passion in Auckland from tonight - is speaking from on high. His hotel room is 2750m up a mountain in Aspen, Colorado.

His spirits are much higher. The day before, fresh powder snow, crisp clean air and "a most brilliant light" gave him a boost in courage and "a certain kind of co-ordination" to ski down that mountain in a way he had never skied before.

"I felt like an eagle," he says.

"I don't dance anymore and this was fantastic - to feel my physical skiing technique so much better than it was 10 years ago."

Such moments of connection with the power of nature and the beauty of the natural world are at the heart of the 56-year-old Canadian's life and his aesthetic.

Pendleton is speaking of both his art and his life when he says: "The world is a dark place and I don't want to increase the darkness.

"I don't want to suck the oxygen out of the room when I come in.

"I try to always remain positive - I hope I will always remain in some kind of light. The most important element we have is the sun."

Momix is known not just for its spectacular dance, in which classical line and athleticism combine in equal measure, but for its visual impact.

Pendleton uses lighting, music and an eclectic array of props alongside the human body in extreme motion to create a world of stunning images and mythic beauty that has wowed international audiences for 20 years.

Pendleton's style is to use the body to create pictures that move, rather than start with dance steps to create a choreography.

Images that inspire come to him at random times. "I never know when I will be attacked by an idea."

Then comes the hard work of concentrating on that image and translating it - which is a discipline, he says.

But within that discipline he is always setting up an atmosphere of play, to allow himself to dream and experiment, but also to stimulate the bodies of his dancers with improvisation, with music - and different types of music to "shock" the dancers' bodies into new action.

He remembers playing lots of Offenbach during the creation of Passion, which is regarded as Momix' signature work.

In Passion, created 15 years ago, Peter Gabriel's score for the 1984 Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ is a dominating element.

But the Momix work is more a pagan celebration of life than a reflection of the Christian story. There is no narrative - it "evokes".

Sections of Passion use titles such as Gethsemane, Lazarus Raised and Stigmata, taken from Gabriel's album. And on stage, mandalas mix with representations of the Christian cross, a Buddhist or Christian image reverberates to an African rhythm, and an ancient Egyptian theme used to ward off evil spirits becomes the music for a ribbon gymnastic number that becomes a fire-dance.

It begins, says Pendleton, as very pagan, then evolves through the terrestrial to the celestial. It is about transformation, metamorphosis.

It is about nature and human contact with the plant, the animal and the mineral world.

"It gives a sense of the universe." 

*  Aotea Centre, from today to April 10