A child princess falls under a sleeping spell in The Quest, Jason Powell’s original fairytale for dancers, singers and musicians. She awakens as an adult woman with narcolepsy. Her parents have vanished. Her quest is to find them. She encounters creatures on her journey; some help, some hinder as she struggles to manage her sleep attacks. Powell wanted to write this tale of empowerment because he has a friend with narcolepsy and because he loves medieval romance.
A brave, accomplished adventurer in hybrid art forms, Powell is a frequent Danceworks Performance Company (DPC) collaborator. His cast—a compassionate jester, a malevolent chancellor, a witch, a troll, a “winter maiden,” a dragon and several generations of fairies—reflects the individuals who’ll play them when DPC presents The Quest at Next Act Theatre. Powell invented characters that would underline the dancers’ strong personas, and the dancers responded by devising their own choreography under the direction of Dani Kuepper.
DPC’s Kim Johnson plays the princess. Guest dancers include Morgan Williams and Christa Smutek from SueMo Dance Company, featured annually in DPC’s summer hip-hop showcase. As Narrators, Powell and guest actor Erin Hartman will speak Powell’s entirely rhymed text and Powell will sing original songs.
The Quest has an equally important collaborator in the Chant Claire Chamber Choir. Benjamin Bedroske, a 2011 graduate of UW-Eau Claire with a bachelor’s degree in choral music education, founded the group in 2013 after moving to Milwaukee to teach high school and to direct two choirs at St. Sava’s Serbian Orthodox Church. “I didn’t see anything in Milwaukee that fit the niche I was looking for,” he said, “which was a smaller ensemble that did smaller a cappella works. The established choral ensembles perform mostly major works with orchestra. So I contacted people I knew largely from Eau Claire that were now in the area. That’s how we got our name, Chant Claire.”
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Dancer Christal Wagner had heard the choir in concert and recommended them when Kuepper declared in rehearsal, “a fairytale needs a sweeping choral sound score.” Thirty movable singers from Chant Claire will perform material ranging from polished Johann Sebastian Bach to raw, early American shape-note singing, as well as modern choral works and neo-modern arrangements of medieval songs with surprising accompaniment provided live by another young group, Cream City Percussion. “This marriage of concrete poetic and sacred music to an abstract, ethereal story,” Bedroske says, “is strange and great.”
Performances are at 7:30 p.m. May 12-13; 4 and 7:30 p.m. May 14; and 2:30 p.m. May 15 at Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. for tickets and further information, call 414-278-0765 or visit nextact.org.
