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Lake Arts Project co-director Karl von Rabineau introduced Moving Beyond the Battlefield with the story of its making. First, a seven-hour workshop with Homestead High School student writers led by Feast of Crispian, the Milwaukee theater company of post-deployment veterans and theater professionals who specialize in radical Shakespeare, mashing the Bard’s texts with recollections by the vets to validate their experiences and brings audiences closer to the costs of combat.
Next, the vets joined the dancers, many from Milwaukee Ballet School and Academy where Rabineau and co-director Jennifer Miller are faculty members, in a workshop led by Adam McKinney of DNAWorks, an arts and service organization that employs the arts in healing practices. McKinney is a former Alvin Ailey dancer and, like Rabineau and Miller, a former Milwaukee Ballet dancer. In the same opening talk, McKinney asked the audience on opening night to “take a risk, look around and see who is not here.” I saw grown-ups; almost no one of color; no one looked poor, hungry or homeless; no one in uniform. The concert, a fifth anniversary celebration for Lake Arts Project, was staged at Danceworks Studio Theatre.
On to the show: seven professional choreographers responded to poems by high school student writers responding to the vets’ life stories. They created dances for a large cast of vets, high school and college dance students, pre-professional and professional dancers. The seminal poems were printed in the program.
Rabineau’s Insieme Siamo Forti featured a powerhouse cast of Milwaukee Ballet’s Lizzie Tripp and Barry Molina, MBII’s Julia Pareto and Diego Garcia Castillo, area professionals Bri George and Elizabeth O’Keefe Roskopf, and talented students Libby Flunker, Kiva Carmen-Frank, Lillie Miller and Madeline Rhode. Wearing camouflage, the dancers worked in caring partnership as soldiers must, while the real life vets Denise Bleakly and Chris Bolden read young Hannah Malicky’s poem “Together” together. The dance ended tragically with one member of each partnership fallen, carried by the other as from a battlefield. The poem ends: “We were once asked if we had the opportunity to start over, would we? No. Hell no. Because together, we fight on, and together, we are one.” Tender piano accompaniment was composed and performed live by Nicolet High School junior Ben Kramer.
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Just as moving was a second response to Malicky’s writing, Becoming Whole, choreographed by Ashley McQueen of Smashworks Dance Collective who performed it with MBII’s Matt Larson. A series of rescues of McQueen by Larson’s character kept flattening both dancers against the wall at one end of the room. Each time, McQueen’s character ventured further onto the dance floor, meaning Larson had to go there, too, if he’s to partner her. Eventually, together, they crossed the entire space; a beautiful performance.
Silma Barrada’s surreal poem “But the Trees are Bigger” inspired UWM dance grad Katharina Abderholden’s 13 Folds for Bolden and a dozen students. The focus seemed to be the trauma of returning to civilian life, loss, being lost, loneliness and shattered pride. PTSD was the subject of Jennifer Miller’s Got Your 6, a response to Angelina Cicero’s prose poem “Marked.” Army veteran Carissa DiPietro who suffers from PTSD and other disabilities was partnered with the skilled dancer Bri George. After standing very close in silhouette, light revealed the contrast. DiPietro sat while George demonstrated freedom and physical virtuosity. We thought about what one had sacrificed to make the other’s dance life possible. But as this wonderful piece unfolded, we also saw that each had much to offer one another now. It ended in a silhouetted embrace.
Bonnie Watson is a choreographer with ties to Milwaukee Ballet, UWM and Wild Space Dance Company. She made A Pink Flower; an Unhinged Door for dancer Madeleine Rhode, a senior at Menomonee Falls High School and longtime student at Milwaukee Ballet School and Academy. Coast Guard veteran Denise Bleakly gave a warm reading of Hannah Bentley’s poem “Fire and Rebirth,” an imaginative identification with the inner life of a solitary soldier. The realities are grim but the responses of the human being are not. Rhode explored that nicely.
McKinney choreographed the final dance, “To Shining See.” Mike Keppert, a former Army combat engineer joined the other vets and most of the company to perform it. Andrea Greuel was the student whose poem “To You” inspired the dance. I was especially struck by the long periods of absolute stillness on the part of everyone on stage, as if they were listening to something both inside and outside them. Sometimes guarded, sometimes terribly vulnerable, the created images of heroism, drudgery and depression. McKinney read the poem aloud to close the show—words of gratitude to vets who suffered and continue to suffer in our places: “I thank you/who have a heart inside your chest/and a body made for living /and hands made for so much more than war.”
