That 1994 piece plunges the viewer back into the world of baseball as it once was, without a bit of preachifying. Mr. Pendleton and his Momix company, which performed the work on Saturday afternoon at the Joyce Theater, have made a witty stylized movement vocabulary out of the moves and swagger of baseball on the field and in the bleachers.

Best of all, the lusciously beautiful fantasy visuals for which the company has become known are not superimposed, as is sometimes the case with Momix, but spring organically from the subject matter. The stage picture is layered with seamlessly interactive imagery. Some of it is projected on a front scrim, including historical photographs colored with the sepia tinge of happy memories. Some of the images are created through the wildly imaginative lighting by Mr. Pendleton and Mitchell S. Levine. The rest are achieved through subtle choreographic effects.

A smooth-flowing suite of brief vignettes, "Baseball" begins with rising green turf, then segues into meadows and ancient standing stones. The first batting practice follows, hilariously, between silhouetted Neanderthals armed with a stick and a rock. The rock eventually morphs into a large, squishy baseball that, maneuvered by the human stuffed inside, travels haplessly around the stage in surprisingly elegant patterns.

Another nugget of dance is for a chorus of oversize beer cans rollicking to James Brown singing "I Got You (I Feel Good)." (The collage also includes reggae, anthems and music by Dead Can Dance and Arvo Pärt.) Babe Ruth and other historical figures loom over the proceedings, vivid shadows that come and go. There are well-chosen snatches of 1940's and 50's radio sports talk from sports reporters and figures like Casey Stengel, Mickey Mantle and Hank Aaron.

The second half of the piece is more abstract and includes passages of Mr. Pendleton's most beautiful choreography. One is a spinning solo for a woman holding a white globe that could be a baseball, an egg, a moon or an atom. And she is an earth mother, simply a woman with a ball, and an Art Deco-lamp nymph in a quick succession of sometimes-overlapping images that come entirely from the dancing and the prop.

Two other dances — simultaneously kitschy and poignant — incorporate large gleaming arches that can be turned, along with the dancers' bodies clinging to and touching them, to create different shapes and atmospheres. "Baseball" ends with a cosmic pitch and a game of catch between two unseen players.

Mr. Pendleton knows — and loves — his baseball. The audience doesn't need to, but the piece is gently and irrevocably seductive. It is also subtle, funny and hauntingly beautiful. The stylish performers are Steve Gonzales, Suzanne Lampl, Ari Loeb, Natalie Lomonte, Heather Magee, Cynthia Quinn and Brian Simerson. "Baseball" will be performed again tomorrow through Saturday night and at both performances on Oct. 12 at the Joyce, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea.

Source: NY Times