Modern dance in Milwaukee is unthinkable without UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts dance department. The faculty includes leaders of every major modern dance company in town. The department conducts dance research and experiments as serious as those of any school of science or technology and offers opportunities for audiences to enjoy the results. Chief among these is Summerdances, the annual concert of new work by faculty, guests and students that closes each school year.
This year’s May 28-30 concert is titled Summerdances: Spirits and Fugitives. The title gained substance when the faculty decided that each dance would somehow honor the late Martin Jack Rosenblum, poet, musician, historian, UWM Music Department faculty member and founder of its unique Rock and Roll Certificate Program. Rosenblum died suddenly at age 67 in 2014.
“Marty was immersed in the mythology of the American West—of fugitives and outlaws who, in the words of one of his favorite Dylan songs, ‘were never known to hurt an honest man,’” says David Luhrssen, the Shepherd Express arts & entertainment editor who frequently collaborated with Rosenblum on essays concerning the cultural background of rock music. “He was always trying to relate that mythology to the present day in his role as a poet and historian of Harley-Davidson, as a teacher of rock history and as a musician who drew from the deep roots of American music.”
“Martin Jack was a lot of different things to a lot of different people,” says faculty member Ferne Caulker Bronson, founding artistic director of Milwaukee’s Ko-Thi Dance Company and the concert’s artistic director. “He was, as far as I can tell, a rebel. He had strong opinions about the university. He was looking for a home and he finally found one at Harley-Davidson.” As Bronson writes in her artistic director’s statement, “Marty was the personification of a soul seeking a ‘home,’ a fugitive and spirit living his life out loud.”
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Six world premieres form the program. Choreographer Maria Gillespie tackles the notion of rebel in “Rogue Fugue.
