Brettell Award Winner Brings Mix of Art, Spectacle to Campus

From dance students at the University Theatre to spectators at a MOMIX dance performance, Moses Pendleton captivated The University of Texas at Dallas community.

Pendleton, an internationally known choreographer who founded MOMIX, received the 2025 Richard Brettell Award in the Arts on Nov. 1. The biennial honor, which comes with a $150,000 prize, is the University’s highest recognition for a lifetime of artistic excellence.

During his four-day residency at UT Dallas’ Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology, Pendleton showcased highlights from his dance theater company, spoke about his creative process, visited students and exhibited his photography.

“It’s such a fresh perspective,” said Genevieve Chong, a visual and performing arts and biomedical sciences junior who participated in a class taught by MOMIX dancer Seah Hagan. “It’s so nice to see something so different and so aesthetically pleasing.”

Amid a trip filled with tours, class visits, lectures and lunches, Pendleton paused to admire the rows of magnolia trees along the Margaret McDermott Mall.

“Nature is making its way in here,” said Pendleton, whose Connecticut home is lined with rows of sunflowers. “[The magnolia trees] remind me of my alley of sunflowers. I walk through it every day. It is a car wash for the soul.”

It is in the quiet moments, absorbing and observing nature, that Pendleton’s inspiration takes root.

“I’m just documenting what nature has designed for us,” Pendleton explained.

A Nov. 2 performance featured seven dances from MOMIX, which Pendleton founded in 1980 and whose creations have spanned TV, commercials, film and theater. Dances evoked images of marigolds, hornets, horses and cows, and varied from visual riddles to humorous portrayals of cowboys.

Props became extensions of the dancers’ bodies, transforming them into marigolds with brightly colored ruffled skirts, hornets with black-and-yellow striped poles, or cow hooves with a stilt that dancers wore on one foot. The stilt served the dual purpose of prop and leg extension to elevate the body as three dancers performed to tango music.

Hagan opened the performance by rotating around the stage with a silver orb that became a gravity-defying extension of her hands.

In another dance called “Paper Trails,” dancers’ bodies were illuminated only by glyphlike images that silhouetted them into surreal shapes. They moved around with life-sized rolls of paper, unfurling them across stage and rolling them back together with their bodies. The performance culminated in a paper pouf that resembled an haute couture gown.

In an encore, dancers exploded onstage to a tribal rhythm, waving red-orange pool noodles that transformed them into dancing sea anemones.

“This was a magical performance we were so happy to host here,” Dr. Nils Roemer, dean of the Bass School and Arts, Humanities, and Technology Distinguished University Chair, said at the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building Lecture Hall. “From now on, we will remember this as a special stage.”

For MOMIX dancer and Highland Park, Texas, native Piper Jo Whitt, who started dancing at 3 years old, the performance was a homecoming. 

“I’m so grateful to be here,” Whitt said. “I love performing with MOMIX. It’s been a wonderful experience, and I’m glad [UT Dallas] got to host us.”

During a public lecture on Nov. 3, Pendleton, who grew up on a Vermont dairy farm, spoke about how his dance career began after he broke his leg skiing.

“My ski career was shattered, but it was the beginning of my dance career,” Pendleton said during the talk moderated by Roemer, who is also the director of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies and the Stan and Barbara Rabin Distinguished Professor in Holocaust Studies.

Holstein cows inspired Pendleton to entertain and perform, and the name of his dance company was born from a milk supplement for veal calves.

“It became Mo’s mix,” Pendleton said of the name. “Whatever goes into the mix. It was a musical term. We thought of ourselves early on as a rock band.”

Pendleton said he constantly listens to music to conjure up choreography, mimicking the movements of nature.

“I take a more sculptural approach to choreography,” he said. “We take dancers and move them through time and space.”

During his visit, Pendleton met students in other schools and attended Hagan’s dance master class at the University Theatre, where 25 students participated.

“Open up your minds, and let everything flow into your bodies,” she told the students.

They were given pool noodles to learn the steps — and constant arm movements — of the encore dance that MOMIX had performed.

“Can they follow the choreography?” Pendleton asked as he watched from the front row. “That’s part of the experience. There’s plenty of challenging things, but it’s not too overwhelming.”

Education senior Julia Ly said the experience was unforgettable.

“It’s what I expected, but also what I didn’t expect,” she said. “I’ll be talking about this forever.”

For Chong, learning from MOMIX was unlike anything she had experienced.

“We thought it would be a short class or movements,” she said. “I definitely did not expect it to be so dynamic. This has been the highlight of my semester.”

For Pendleton, the visit was equally rewarding.

“The enthusiasm and positive attitudes were contagious,” he said.