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The annual performance by Milwaukee Ballet’s so-called second company, MBII, at the South Milwaukee Performing Art Center, has become for me a much-anticipated event. It’s a great pleasure to see revered standards from the classical repertory performed up close in a program that also features world premieres and serious experiment. It’s a rare chance to learn with the artists about the range of ballet’s possibilities. This year’s program opens with Chopiniana , the legendary one-act “pure ballet” also known as Les Sylphides . It closes with And Then It Rained , a gorgeous new work (seen in rehearsal) by Milwaukee Ballet’s increasingly remarkable resident choreographer Timothy O’Donnell. The program also includes celebrated excerpts from the 19th-century ballets Sylvia and Raymonda and premieres by current Milwaukee Ballet dancer Isaac Sharratt and former company dancer Adam Sterr.
MBII offers highly trained and talented younger dancers the professional polishing they need to land good jobs in ballet companies around the globe. The current class includes dancers from five continents. Some will join Milwaukee Ballet’s regular company, many of whom are graduates.
Russian choreographer Michel Fokine devised Chopiniana at the end of the 19th century. It’s set to Chopin’s piano works. Milwaukee Ballet’s brilliant accompanist Daniel Boudewyns will play the onstage piano in this staging by MBII Artistic Director Rolando Yanes. “The style is so good for the dancers,” says Yanes. “It’s classical classical.” The cast of 17 female “sylphs” will be augmented with dancers from the Milwaukee Ballet Academy. Second-year MBII dancer Andrew Wingert will perform the sole male role.
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To complement Chopiniana ’s casting, Sharratt’s made a dance for four men. Choreographer Sterr also plays viola; he’ll accompany his dancers live playing in an onstage string quartet. MBII’s Marie Varlet and regular company dancer Mengjun Chen will dance the pas de deux from Sylvia . The Raymonda excerpt features the ensemble.
O’Donnell’s dance is a sequel to last year’s MBII premiere, At World’s End , a work so wonderful it was repeated as a curtain raiser to the full company’s Winter Series last February. “I was a bit darker last year,” O’Donnell said. “This one has more joy to it. The end is much freer, the feeling of people running out into a hot summer rain.” Five couples dance in shifting combinations to gorgeous music from Max Richter’s Memoryhouse . The sensuous, complex, challenging episodes have a big emotional impact.
2 and 7:30 p.m., Jan. 24 at South Milwaukee Performing Arts Center, 901 15th Ave. Call 414-766-5049 or visit southmilwaukeepac.org.
