I'malready looking forward to next winter when, if there's a God, Milwaukee BalletTwo will give its fourth annual concert at the South Milwaukee Performing ArtsCenter. There's nothing like it in Milwaukee's dance season. While providingMilwaukee Ballet's pre-professional company a grand way to gain experience, itoffers audiences an enjoyable education in ballet's past and present.
TheSouth Milwaukee auditorium is small enough to see the dancers faces, read theirthoughts, feel their challenges, appreciate their skill and share their joy indancing. For me this year, the big excitement was the choreography, all of itwell executed by this good looking international company. There were radicallycontrasting world premieres by each of Milwaukee Ballet's two residentchoreographers and the revival of a 2007 piece by master choreographer MichaelPink.
Theevening started with no curtain speech. House lights dimmed as a young womanwandered onstage to the fading strains of an orchestra playing Cole Porter's"Begin The Beguine." The stage was bare but for a smartly lightedgrand piano. The woman was dressed in a rose-colored gown that would havesuited one of Fred Astaire's dance partners.
Insilence, two young men in white dress shirts, black pants and cummerbunds tookplaces. Other men and women arrived, eight in all. Already there were somemistakes in finding the right place and partner for what appeared to be aballroom dance class. Everybody faced the piano. Accompanist Daniel Boudewynsentered and began to play his lush arrangements of a six great Porter songs,grounding "Another Show" in real place and time.
Theinfectious choreography by resident choreographer Petr Zahradnicek matched themusic. What seemed a dance class quickly became a rehearsal, then aperformance. In swoony Fred-and-Ginger ballroom style ballet with plenty offlash, the dancers performed as the people they are, managing emotions, workinghard. We saw teamwork, friendship, loneliness, ambition, chagrin, naiveté,generosity. Always engaging, warmly sensuous, both nostalgic and contemporary,Zahradnicek's choreography zipped by. In its honesty, it set the tone forentire night.
MichaelPink created "Aubade" for the professional Milwaukee Ballet companyof which he is, of course, artistic director. Its similarities to his famousfull-length story ballets are fascinating. If not for this concert, I'd neverknow this work. Knowing it deepens the pleasure I take in all of his work.
Againsta glowing red sky, seven men in khaki pants and shirts stand, backs to us,focused on something off-stage. By the finale, we understand that they arewaiting for a signal to depart. Who knows where or why? One of them—GarrettGlassman, a stand-out performer all evening—begins to dance in rapid, sweepingmovements as if releasing pent-up energy or holding some inevitablecircumstance at bay through sheer vitality. Later, he abandons himself to oneof three women who arrive dressed in green—Andrea Chickness, Alana Griffith,Makiko Sutani, all of them remarkable. They love these men. Clearly, theybelong together but the women are left staring at that mysterious vanishingpoint offstage when the men have gone.
Thedramatic orchestral score by Francis Poulenc is essential to Pink's almostpastoral depiction of anxious stillness, fierce vitality, eroticism and sorrow.The dancers lacked nothing in the way of technique and brought real feeling totheir roles. In a dance as open to life and death as this one, I was consciousof their youth.
Thatyouthfulness became the subject in resident choreographer Timothy O'Donnell"At World's End," a dance of survival in a too-imaginable futurewasteland. The great electronic accompaniment by Olafur Arnalds included achildlike robot voice and lines like "...all I heard was the screamingsilence of the wind...I will always remember this as our last, lostchance."
O'Donnell'schoreography is smart, muscular, extreme in tempo and hellishly complex. The 20black-clad, black-eyed dancers grabbed hold of it as if their lives depended onit. Confrontational at first, their eyes directed toward the audience, theirbodies stretched as far as possible, draped, carried, interlocked, limbsextended past the possible, what seemed like tough brave individuals becameinstead a new generation of young people depending on each other, trusting eachother, caring for each another and focused on a mission: making art. So theevening came full circle.
Twobright classical chestnuts were sandwiched between these contemporary ballets."Pas de Trois des Odalisques" from Le Corsaire was perfectly danced by Andrea Chickness, MollyHuempfner and Marie Varlet. Hinano Eto and Kazuja Arima were brilliant in thedifficult variations of Harlequinade.Kathryn Manger, Kaylee Vernetti, Isreal Garcia Chenge, Tony Sewer, Carlos Ruis,Jose Soares and Andrew Wingert were wonderful in other featured roles.
