As the founder and artistic director of the dance-theater company Momix, Moses Pendleton has spent the past 45 years blurring the line between art, nature and reality.
Pendleton is being honored with the 2025 Richard Brettell Award in the Arts at the University of Texas at Dallas on Nov. 1. The following week, he’s leading a weeklong residency at the school with students in dance, visual arts and photography.
“I feel very honored and quite surprised,” Pendleton said. “I've often said that one learns a great deal from one's students. So in that interaction I'm looking forward to getting a little piece of the next generation that is interested in creating new forms and intermingling with science and technology.”
Founded in 1980, Momix is known for its breathtaking visual theater, mixing dance, athletics, acrobatics and ballet. The company’s name itself is a nod to its artistic approach. Pendleton calls it a “mix” of movement and imagination. Momix has had production themes ranging from baseball to Alice in Wonderland.
Pendleton describes the company’s work as “a theater of illusions and magic. High energy, funny, and hopefully a daydream and not a nightmare.”
The Vermont native said his inspiration often begins outside the studio. Pendleton was raised as a cross-country skier. After a ski injury, he wanted to slow down but still maintain an active lifestyle so he took a dance class. He quickly learned how to express himself through rhythm in the natural world.
“You could say perhaps that Momix was putting an aesthetic to the athletic,” he said.
That connection to nature has only deepened over time. When he’s not teaching dancers, Pendleton is often out in the woods with a camera, capturing faces and forms hidden in tree bark, clouds and shadows. For Pendleton, both dance and photography are about revealing what’s hidden and transforming the ordinary into art.
“The whole experience of photography actually trains the eye and the brain to see many times what many people can't see. And I'm very kind of involved in exploring what it is that I'm coming up with,” he said.
Pendleton’s photographs will be part of his residency at UT Dallas, alongside screenings, Q&A sessions and a performance by Momix. The company will also return to Dallas in June with Botanica, a full-length production at the Winspear Opera House inspired by the living forms of plants and animals.
Momix will perform at 3 p.m. Nov. 2 in the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building at the Bass School of UT Dallas.
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