Photo Credit: Tom Davenport
“Can the Milwaukee Ballet meet the classical ballet challenge?” Michael Pink joked rhetorically at the start of our interview. “Of course they can!” he answered.
There’s no question that watching the dancers leap hurdles is part of the pleasure of Swan Lake, as is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s music performed by live orchestra. The story is interesting, too, especially as Pink has revised it from the Russian original. Storytelling is his choreographic forte. He brings to Swan Lake elements of modern realism in terms of the characters’ psychologies and their physical and social environment. To that end, he separates the traditional dual role of White Swan and Black Swan, with the added benefit that the two swans can appear together. He also shortens the ballet’s original “dance spectacular” structure, condensing four acts into two; and he positions the magician, Count von Rothbart, as conniver and driver of the tragedy, a power-hungry perversion of The Nutcracker’s generous toymaker.
When I asked for his thoughts on the challenges, Pink said, “It’s interesting how, with a company this diverse, not everybody’s playing from the same training manual.” The Milwaukee Ballet includes dancers that have trained in Cuba, the U.S. and elsewhere, “and their base of training really gets exposed when you do these standard classical ballets. You really begin to see if people can meet the types of demands that have been in these ballets for years.
“In Swan Lake,” he continues, “we know that the Black Swan has to spin around on one leg for 32 fouettés, the Prince has to do his variations and the swans have to dance in perfect geometric forms. Those are good challenges for any company. They really over-expose your dancers. That’s a good thing because if any of them feel self-conscious about any aspect of their technique, now is the time to get over it and rise to the challenge.”
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Leading artist Nicole Teague-Howell will dance Odette, the White Swan, for the first time. She was part of the “swan corps” when the company last presented Pink’s production in 2013 and she loved it, she said, “but obviously Odette is a dream role. The challenges are definitely in the technique, the integrity of the technique and of the ballet traditions. The delicate precision and the port a bras (the way the arms are used) is iconic.”
A San Diego native, Teague-Howell joined Milwaukee Ballet’s pre-professional company in 2006, was hired to the main company in 2008 and is now a leading artist. “What I’m most excited about, honestly, is doing Michael’s version,” she said. “We get to have our hair down like we’ve just crawled out of the lake. We have bare legs and the choreography feels human and animalistic both. The way we enter—the transformation, I’m going to sound ridiculous but—it’s almost like a werewolf because we really transform from bird to woman. It’s a painful process and she has to do this every night. I think in her mind she’s confused; she’s turning into a woman but she’s a swan in reality. When the Prince comes to see her, she’s not the person she used to be, she doesn’t recognize him now and she’s afraid. There’s a human coming at her and she’s just a bird. It’s dramatic and lovely. And then when she dies, tragic.”
Leading artist Marize Fumero, a Cuban native in her fourth year with the company, will dance the Black Swan, Odile, for the first time. It’s one of her dreams as well, she said. I asked about the famous 32 fouettés. “We’re working on that,” she answered. “Every single day in class we’re working on technique. So when I go onstage, I don’t forget about technique but I already have it in my body. I trust the technique that I’ve been working on and just go one hundred percent with my heart. I feel chills and all that. For me, it’s like—what is the best I can do in that role? I don’t feel pressure from the tradition because every time it’s different. In ballet, it’s what you’re feeling right in the moment, so comparing performances would be pointless. For me, it’s not what the audience sees but what they feel when they’re watching.”
Fumero joins Luz San Miguel as Odette and Davit Hovhannisyan as Prince Siegfried. The alternating cast combines Teague-Howell with Annia Hidalgo and Randy Crespo. San Miguel, Hovhannisyan and Hidalgo are reprising their roles. I watched them all in rehearsal explore the possibilities of the characters and choreography, making it their own. They rehearsed in character to Tchaikovsky as rendered by Steven Ayers on piano. The seasoned dancers shared their knowledge with the newcomers. Pink stopped when anything went wrong. They laughed, made jokes and tried again. It was beautiful, this dancing, this music, this commitment to art.
7:30 p.m. May 31-June 2; and 1:30 p.m. June 2-3 at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, 929 N. Water St. For tickets call 414-902-2103 or visit milwaukeeballet.org.
