DANCE REVIEW : Momix at El Camino

Momix dancers move as though they’re testing out new gravitational fields or accustoming themselves to the strangeness of their own limbs. The fluid, spontaneous quality of their work is unique, but fragile ideas expressed with a limited technical vocabulary add up to undeveloped sketches that are sometimes overly repetitious.

The 10 pieces performed Wednesday night at El Camino College (where the size of Marsee Auditorium diffused some of the impact of this delicately fanciful choreography) consisted mostly of old favorites.

“E.C.” remains a wonderfully inventive form of shadow play. In “Skiva,” Lisa Giobbi and Alan Boeding propelled their torsos into sensuous arcs with feet planted in skis. “Circle Walker” offered Boeding diving and rearing like some protean creature in a huge, gleaming gyroscope. Moses Pendleton swaggered bonelessly through his white suit-and-cane routine in “Momix.”

But “Bird in My Dreams,” the one new piece (another was deleted from the program due to technical difficulties), amounted to little more than an interlude of expert body waving and ripple walking by Cynthia Quinn.

The few attempts at sustaining an idea past an initial fascination with its offbeat movement possibilities never quite clicked. “Stabat Mater” presented Quinn as a devoutly religious woman who looked to a giant, domineering diety (Timothy Latta on stilts) for guidance; though visually arresting, the piece ended tritely with the woman’s whirling “liberation.”