Image via Facebook / Milwaukee Ballet
Milwaukee Ballet plans to present three concerts this winter-spring season. The first, To the Pointe, features classical masterpieces, a world premiere by artistic director Michael Pink, and a recent work by resident choreographer Timothy O’Donnell, all in classical style. It runs Feb. 25-28 and March 4-7 in the well-equipped studio theatre of the company’s Third Ward home, the Baumgartner Center for Dance.
The breaking news is that, after careful inspection, city health inspectors have given permission to seat 52 patrons—25% of capacity—at each of the show’s twelve performances, which include weekend matinees. “I tell people this is what it must have been like in Russia when dancers went to perform for the czar,” Pink says in a phone conversation. “Just a very elite group watching the performance.” The show will also be filmed and available On Demand on the company’s website.
Of the Health Department’s visit, Pink says, “They were blown away—those are their words—by how organized we were, how detailed our protocols were, and how they were actually working because we’d been doing them since September.”
Built for Safety
Luckily, the Baumgartner Center seems built for current safety requirements. Entering and leaving the building, the theatre, the seating, and even the bathroom should you need it, can be done while maintaining necessary distance. Masks are required. The performers, safely distanced from spectators, will also wear them. To heighten safety, To the Pointe runs just an hour. “Using the word ‘normal’ feels so strange now,” Pink says, “but normally we’d look to fill up to two hours. So the current restrictions have created an opportunity for us to create a program of 10 minute excerpts, or the piece I’ve just created which is fourteen minutes long, things we’d struggle to present otherwise.
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“I wanted to do a classically-based program,” he continued, “because everything is pushed to its limit for the dancers. It constantly reminds us that the challenges are so demanding. The level of detail, the authenticity of it, is crucial to its looking right. It’s great for the older dancers who love to do these showcase classics. And for the younger ones, it gives them a taste of reality. Welcome to ballet! Like in gymnastics, if you’re not going to challenge yourself, you’re never going to really work.”
The world premiere of Pink’s Symphony is set to Sergei Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony. Eight dancers, four women and four men, maintain social distance throughout. While non-narrative, the dancers are always thinking about character and relationships, Pink said. “You’ll relate to them as people first and foremost, and then be blown away by their talented classical dancing.” That would also be true for the program’s highlighted masterpiece, a legendary Pas de Quatré created by Jules Perrot for four of the most popular European ballerinas of the Romantic Era. It will be performed in its entirety by eight of the most popular Milwaukee ballerinas of our era. Alana Griffith, Itzel Hernandez, Annia Hidalgo and Lizzie Tripp will alternate performances with Elizabeth Harrison, Marie Harrison-Collins, Kristen Marshall and Lahna Vanderbush.
True, too, for a famed pas de trois from Swan Lake, danced in its traditional choreography; and for an athletic pas de deux from Le Corsaire, recreated in 2005 for the powerful Russian dancers of Indianapolis’ Ballet International; and for the touching Chopin Etudes created to the title music several years back by O’Donnell for MBII, Milwaukee Ballet’s young company-in-training. This time, resident pros Kristen Marshall and Ransom Wilkes-Davis will trade performances with Lizzie Tripp and Davit Hovhannisyan.
Winning Choreography
In contrast, the planned second concert of the reimagined season is an all-contemporary program. Titled Re:Gen, it revisits Genesis, the company’s bi-annual international choreographic competition, to reprise three one-act works popular with audiences and dancers. Pink hopes it will still be safe to seat patrons at the Baumgartner Center. Again, it will be available On Demand.
Re:Gen will include Italian choreographer Enrico Morelli’s The Noise of Whispers, winner of the 2017 Audience Choice Award; Brazilian choreographer Mariana Oliveira’s Pagliacci, a powerful contender in that legendary 2017 competition; and Timothy O’Donnell’s The Games We Play, which won both the Audience Choice and Judge’s Decision Awards in 2009, and ultimately led the Australian choreographer and dancer to join Milwaukee Ballet and play big roles on and off stage.
“It’s a time when we hope people will trust us,” Pink emphasizes. “If people will come to To the Pointe, and I so hope they will because it’s such a strong program, it will increase confidence to attend Re: Gen. And hopefully, come June when we go into the renovated Marcus Performing Arts Center for our Encore program, it will feel like we’ve started the process of building our attendance back.” The June concert, Encore, will “mix and match,” in Pink’s words. The dances are still TBD.
For tickets, directions and a thorough description of safely protocols, visit milwaukeeballet.org.
