Quinn at the bat

The cast of “Lunar Sea,” made up of ten dancers, has a manifest of magic at their command, and much of it comes out of the mind, heart and body of Cynthia Quinn, the co-artistic director of the company and the life partner of Moses Pendleton, who founded MOMIX a quarter of a century ago.
Pendleton was one of the four founders of the world-famous Pilobolus Dance Theater and Quinn was one of the early members of the troupe. “Lunar Sea,” which premiered at the dance-centered Joyce Theater last week to enthusiastically positive notices, quickly sold out the remainder of its run, which ends this Sunday evening.
“Lunar Sea,” apart from constituting a major MOMIX triumph, also shows traces, as do many of the company’s works, of Quinn and Pendleton’s Pilobolus origins. The fanciful range of “Lunar Sea” imagery may call up memories of Walt Disney’s 1940 classic, “Fantasia,” in the minds of many viewers.
After a Saturday matinee performance specifically for an audience largely made up of children, Cynthia Quinn relaxed in the empty Joyce auditorium and talked about the workings of the company as the theater’s stage crew lined up on the stage and pitched pennies before settling in for the evening show.
“‘Lunar Sea’ started out as a 25-minute piece we created on commission for the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet,” she said, “but we knew it had potential to grow into a full-length work.”
The term “full-length” has a certain elasticity for MOMIX. “Lunar Sea” lasts about 95 minutes and has an intermission, while “Opus Cactus,” the classic company work that opened the troupe’s current three-week season, has an intermission along with an overall running time of over two hours.
The same is true of “Baseball,” which is probably the company’s most enduringly popular work, a witty and oddly moving riff on the country’s “national pastime,” a joyous evening which, while not currently being performed by MOMIX, will definitely return in the near future.
“Baseball” is also the only MOMIX production in which Quinn, who at 52 is still youthful, flexible and appealingly coltish, is currently a member of the performing ensemble, doing a solo, “The Windup,” which she has become rather closely identified over the years, at least in the world of dance.
“Lunar Sea” seems destined to add to the MOMIX luster, and Quinn, with her puckish sense of humor, views the new work with wit.
“There’s a pun in the title,” she said, “if you want to see it. She means, of course, the word “lunacy,” which definitely throws additional light on the subject, suitably enough, considering that the term’s origins have to do with the mysterious object that, among other things, lights the night skies.
“Our daughter, Quinn Elizabeth Pendleton,” she said, “was a student at the Nutmeg Conservatory, a dance school in Connecticut, and, since we had the commission, Moses wanted to do something for the school on a kind of co-commission basis. They agreed, so we did a lot of rehearsing and developing with the Nutmeg dancers, using their facilities, and then we’d go out to Aspen and work there. Then we’d come back and work with Nutmeg again and, finally, do a few rehearsals with MOMIX.”
The result was that brief work which turned into a great success for the Aspen Santa Fe company and which is now the opening 25 minutes of the expanded work.
Cynthia Quinn’s own childhood was not as pleasant, nor as secure, as the one she and Moses Pendleton have provided for their daughter.
“We were from Canada,” she said, “and my Irish father disappeared when I was five, so you might say I didn’t know him very well. We moved to Southern California, specifically to Fontana, a steel mill town halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs.”
When she was 27, Quinn auditioned for the Pilobolus Company, and was one of 200 women who turned up to try out for a single female slot in the troupe.
“I’d graduated in dance at University of California at Riverside,’ she said, “and I’d stayed on as an associate professor for five years. I’d only danced semi-professionally with small companies around California, and I’d moved to New York about six months before the Pilobolus audition.”
It was at that audition that Quinn first met Moses Pendleton.
“The Pilobolus people vote on everything,” she says, and he was the only one who didn’t want me. He thought I was too boyish, but he got talked into it.”
The company name, MOMIX, had been the title of a solo Moses Pendleton had created on a commission for the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1980.
“It was the first thing Moses had done on his own,” she recalled, “and it led more or less directly to the formation of the company, which debuted officially at the Teatro Nazionale in Milan in 1981.”
MOMIX began in Milan as a “company” of two dancers, Pendleton and his teacher when he was a Dartmouth undergraduate, Alison Chase, doing a program of solos and duets.
“The early shows were chaotic and disorganized,” Quinn said, “with guest dancers from other companies coming and going. After a while, however, we had four regular company members, then six and then ten. Now we have a pool of thirty dancers.”
Not that audiences at the Joyce this week will see thirty dancers on stage. There are three MOMIX companies, each of them composed of ten dancers, five male and five female, with a certain amount of mixing and matching, depending on the needs of the piece being performed.
“Last week,” Quinn said, “there were two companies on tour and this one here in New York. At the end of the week, one of the touring troupes came home. Five of the ten dancers who did ‘Opus Cactus’ aren’t in ‘Lunar Sea,’ and five dancers from the tour have replaced them.”
Over the years, Quinn and Pendleton have worked out an efficient way of keeping MOMIX afloat. Each of their numbers, usually performed by ten dancers, can be done by eight, if necessary. A kind of built-in understudy system has been developed.
“Some dancers,” Quinn said, “seem to remain immersed in their own roles, while others automatically learn everything. Those people make it possible to keep the show going if someone is missing due to injury or whatever.”
One MOMIX troupe recently toured Asia, while another is about to set out for Russia.
“For each tour,” she said, “we regroup them depending on what parts need to be filled, and who knows what roles, and who’s available, and things like that.”
Although Cynthia Quinn isn’t performing onstage in the current Joyce season, and won’t be dancing at all until “Baseball” comes back into the MOMIX repertoire, she’s very much a power behind the scenes, fully occupied with the company.
“We have a company manager in our office in Connecticut,” she said, “and then Moses and I do a lot of the scheduling, management and things having to do with rehearsals. I do a lot of the financial things, accounting, booking, payroll, although we have a regular accountant.”
Fundamentally, Cynthia Quinn’s heart is still the heart of a dancer, not an accountant. Cutting back on performing hasn’t always been easy, she admits.
“Everybody does all of my parts,” she said, “but they’re all somewhat autobiographical. Sometimes, I’ll be sitting with someone who’s doing one of my solos, and somebody will come up and tell the dancer how beautiful it was, and I always think there’s part of me up there. On the other hand, I’ve taught the “Baseball” solo to several people, and they all bring something new to it.”
And that’s part of the game, whether it’s baseball or dance, and Cynthia Quinn knows it — and has learned to accept it with grace.