When Artistic Director Dani Kuepper invited choreographer Janet Lilly to contribute to Danceworks Performance Company’s winter concert, she had no idea that her former colleague in the UW-Milwaukee Dance Department had made a dance honoring Ed Burgess, the beloved department chair whose unexpected death in 2011 is still mourned. Lilly made “Requiem” for her students at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro where she has headed the Dance Department since shortly after Burgess’ death. The Milwaukee premiere of “Requiem” will be danced by the friends, students and colleagues of Burgess, including Joe Fransee, Elizabeth Johnson, Joseph Pikalek, Natasha Posey, Madeleine Schoch, Dan Schuchart and the Danceworks Performance Company.
“It’s a dance for Ed,” Kuepper said, “celebrating dancers and dancing.”
" Breathe also features a revival of DPC Artistic Manager Kim Johnson’s 2012 solo “Without Word or Sound,” made for Johnson’s mother who also passed in 2011. Johnson remembers sharing her grief and anger over her mother’s death with Burgess, who consoled her by saying that while you never get over a loved one’s death, you learn to live with it. Johnson’s gravely emotional performance in 2012 was part of that difficult journey. She’s ready to return to it, she said.
As a deep breath restores, Breathe is about healing. Five other dances are featured, including a premiere by Kuepper of a group dance set to traditional Estonian religious choral music. Deaths and other sorrows suffered in recent years have had a unifying impact on the company, Kuepper said. “There is beauty in the day-to-day-ness of being with a group of dancers you enjoy, sweating, working, lifting each other up. That’s the dance I’m making.”
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In “Pilgrimage,” Joelle Worm considers the meaning of prayer and the traditional images of saints. Gina Laurenzi choreographed the love duet “Winter Becomes You” for a male-female couple; here it will be danced by DPC’s male company members, Alberto Cambra and Andrew Zanoni.
Cadance Collective, the experimental performance trio of choreographer Christal Wagner, flutist Emma Koi and cellist Alicia Storin, will perform their newly reworked Tidal in which Koi creates the anchoring sounds by talking into her flute about breath. Dancer/filmmaker Kym McDaniel will premiere a short film of which Kuepper said, “It’s about the release, the moment in a recovery process when you allow yourself to feel joy again.”
Breathe will be performed at 7:30p.m., March 5-7, with an additional 5:00p.m. performance on Saturday March 7 at Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. For tickets call 414-278-0756 or visit nextact.org.
