It was easy to believe that the young performers in the UW-Milwaukee Dance Department’s Winterdances: Refuge have futures in dance. Their commitment to the work, and their love for dancing was clear. They did beautiful work under difficult circumstances. So did the designers and technicians. Last week’s weather forced the university to close for the days that would otherwise have been the concert’s dress rehearsals and opening night, so they opened a day late with just a few hours to pull it all together.
The dominant impression, hand-in-hand with the excellence of the dancing, was the concert’s visual beauty—the lighting by Ellie Rabinowitz, costumes by Lisa Schobert and Leslie Vaglica and especially the scenic design by Nicole Bauguss and videography by Kym McDaniel that powerfully graced the show’s centerpiece, “The Gray Shape of Wasp’s Nests,” choreographed by artistic director Simone Ferro. A dance response to stories from the lives of several generations of Milwaukee women, Ferro’s piece also featured Susan Firer’s poems as recorded by Firer and the wonderful Flora Coker. This lovely idea was marred by the sound quality at that first performance, no doubt due to the lack of prep time. And, in this piece and others, whenever dancers spoke or sang onstage, their voices needed amplification.
Ferro’s piece presented women, onstage and off, as loving providers of refuge and continuity, helping their children into the future, just as this concert was doing. The show’s five choreographers—and all but one of the dancers—were women. All the dances spoke of that in essential ways across a range of styles.
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.
The one man, Matthew Wagner, and his partner, Lehua Estrada, executed choreographer Bryn Cohn’s “Viewpoint” perfectly. Intimately attuned to each other and at speed, the pair carved out space for one another until a threatening rumble drowned their music, and the stage darkened. In “treewaterland-milwaukee,” choreographer Esther Baker-Tarpaga paid tribute to the indigenous women of Lake Michigan’s southwestern shore. Her dancers arrived with handfuls of tiny lights and moved as ghosts until the world disintegrated into contemporary chaos. In choreographer Darci Wutz’ “Together Alone,” three women danced as the title announces with self-possession and genuine glamour.
Aerial choreographer Andrea Burkholder’s “Residence Time” was the dreamy finale. Fearless dancers climbed high on swaths of silk—swung, slid or spun in an aerial hoop to the gorgeous music of Milwaukee's voice and electronics duo HydraViolet, adventuring and taking care of one another. It was heaven.
