Photo by Jenn Mazza
Looking like the best classical ballet company you’d ever want to see, Milwaukee Ballet opened its season last weekend with an exemplary production of Don Quixote. First fashioned from bits of Miguel de Cervantes’ great novel by choreographer Marius Petipa in the mid-19th century for privileged audiences in Imperial Russia, its forms expose dancers the way an Olympic competition does athletes. It was clear in Michael Pink’s reconsideration of the classical choreography that our hometown company is dancing at the highest level. All that technical excellence might have been too much, in fact, had the acting been less warmly contemporary or the staging less witty.
The Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra played superbly under conductor Andrews Sill. The passionate faux-Spanish score by Ludwig Minkus underlines every shift in the action and gives the show enormous momentum. As if to honor the contribution the musicians would make all night, Pink—who usually raises the curtain after the first few bars—allowed the show to begin with a complete orchestral overture.
Among Pink’s many strengths is his ability to defuse or entirely eliminate the outdated gender and class assumptions of the old court-oriented ballets. Much of Act Two consists of representations of the almost otherworldly maidenhood cherished by the title character, a devotee of books about knights and chaste damsels in distress. Pink puts the focus on the real accomplishments of the actual women onstage. The brilliant Luz San Miguel has already demolished the stereotype of female helplessness with her self-possessed portrait of the heroine Kitri in Act One. Annia Hidalgo destroys it again in Act Three as she meets the formidable challenges of the central pas de deux on equal footing with her partner, Alexandre Ferreira.
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Freshly promoted to the rank of leading artist, Ferreira almost stole the show as San Miguel’s Act One suitor, more in love with himself than with her. Davit Hovhannisyan, always terrific, was hilarious as the ardent barber who wins her. What a joy to see Patrick Howell dance again after three years with Ballet Augsburg! He and Nicole Teague were gorgeous as sultry gypsies in a slow duet, eventually joined by Isaac Sharratt in top form. Denis Malinkine was clear and delicate in the mostly mimed role of the addled Don. In a fat suit, Ryan Martin clowned ferociously as Sancho Panza. Every dancer mattered and deserves praise.
