Heather Mrotek
SueMo’s winter dance concert Emergence aimed to demonstrate a new maturity in the work of this three-year old company. For me, it did that. Co-founders Melissa Sue Anderson and Morgan Williams and associate artistic director Christa Smutek are accomplished artists from out of state who’ve made Milwaukee their home and Studio One Dance Company in Wales their teaching base. Building and introducing a dance company can’t be easy. This concert’s theme might be the challenges of managing the combined and potentially conflicting responsibilities to students, company members and one’s own art faced by people devoted to all of these.
Most pointedly, Williams’ Rebirth of Serenity was a moving expression of crazy-making anxiety and the necessary surrender to the humbling limits of the possible. “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good…” Nina Simone sings at the start as thoughtful, unsteady dancers sway. Soon they’re screaming, shaking and doing a kind of driven communal dance that captured for me the alarm so many Americans feel today. Williams then honors his company members in a sequence in which, one by one, we’re shown their individual artistry. Dancer Tyler Kerbel, superb as Williams’ surrogate, is left at the end to create something worthy of them. The concert also included William’s aching, hopeful 2016 piece Wash in which a community supports its members in times of uncertainty.
Anderson’s mind-bending I Am Nine for nine women (perhaps the conflicting impulses of one) seemed to ask whether progress might come from unflagging self-discipline and devotion to the cause. Company member Cailey Bruno and apprentice Jade Flanders were outstanding as older and younger attitudes toward work. The collective unrest of the youngest dancers was beautifully designed and executed.
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Smutek’s tragicomic Broken Chord, to a Chopin piano nocturne played live by young Leticia Broetto with a perfect lack of interpretive interest, presented two male-female couples in traditional ballet gender relationships doing traditional ballet movements to the music. The women were at best listless; sometimes they’d simply flop over. The absence of any stake, passion or connection between the partners was pronounced. The performance was exquisite, the meanings many.
The concert included works for the student dancers of SueMo II: a playful contemporary ballet by Smutek and a bravado hip hop piece by resident choreographer (and outstanding dancer) Birane Moore. Kameron Saunders two-part (We)ight opened the program. Half contemporary ballet, half jazz/hip hop, it clarified the styles SueMo fuses.
