Karen Raymond and Katie Rhyme—aka Dance Revolution Milwaukee—are providing a community service with MKE Follies , their inexpensive bimonthly variety show intended to introduce the next generation of Milwaukee’s performing artists to one another and to the city. They’ve built a good reputation: Among the viewers at last Friday’s eighth edition were the chair of UW-Milwaukee’s Dance Department and a choreographer from Danceworks Performance Company.
Their venue is The Box, a second-floor warehouse space just south of Wisconsin Avenue with a high ceiling, polished hardwood floor and a wall of windows overlooking Broadway. The atmosphere is perfectly congenial. The producers installed a makeshift cash bar and an appealing diversity of seating possibilities facing a wide playing area with a gleaming cream city brick wall for backdrop. Lighting was comfortably functional. Acoustics were fine for unamplified instruments and voices.
The six acts followed one another without pause. Cellists Marie Warren and Alicia Storin opened with five short duets by Béla Bartók. They played clearly and well enough to let the great composer’s music work its dark magic. Katharina Abderholden’s dance solo, “Lily-livered,” followed. Against a recorded voice directing her in yogic relaxation practices, she slowly turned and twitched in small convulsions, a stunned mass of nerves. Then, to Bach cello music, she cut loose, reveling in movement.
A postmodern troubadour, Liisa Church played an original violin composition and intermittently harmonized with it in lush wordless vocalizing. Gradually, she added simple dance steps. These were negligible but her music, with its medieval cast, was stirring. Something of a stunt, it could develop depth. Stand-up comedian Tim Hunter has an appealing, low-key style and amusing jokes but, maddeningly, his microphone served him poorly and I lost many punch lines.
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Dancer Tara Wrobel seemed to follow her physical impulses in a rather bleak, unstructured work to a rapid rap accompaniment. I’m sorry to say it was lost on me. For me, the evening’s highlight was the Tontine Ensemble of Allen Russell (violin), Molly Lieberman (viola) and Pat Reinholtz (cello). Founded just last spring, they are a tight group. They gave a strong performance of Anthony Braxton’s challenging Opus 23c, playing complicated rhythms in perfect unison. They demonstrated their virtuosity in an expansive set of improvisations that closed the show.
Raymond and Rhyme are accepting proposals for upcoming MKE Follies in November and January.
