Wild Space Dance Company’s ‘Trace Elements’ of Milwaukee’s Past

Nineteenth-century German Romantics anguished overthe discrepancy between what the unfettered mind can imagine and the earthboundbody can achieve. Physical training programs, which included rhythmic movementand gymnastics, were cultivated in an effort to bridge that gap and bringindividuals closer to ideals of health, harmony, clearheadedness, freedom andcourage.

The Germans who fled to Milwaukee in the mid-19th century, many ofthem leading voices in the failed democratic revolutions back home, alsobrought with them a social democratic political vision and a passionate civicactivism. Their clubhouse, as historian John Gurda calls it, was Turner Hall,organized in 1853. There they ate, drank, partied, planted the seeds ofMilwaukee Socialism, trained in gymnastics, danced and presented exhibitions ofphysical feats. These political philosophers, writers, athletes and artistsgave Milwaukee an international reputation as the“German Athens” of the United States, a comparison to the birthplace ofWestern culture.

The haunting, surely haunted second-floor ballroomof Turner Hall has just entered a new phase as a commercial roadhouse, and nowthe building is the site for Deb Loewen and her Wild Space Dance Company’s newest, danced response to the physicalremains (Trace Elements) of Milwaukee’s culturalpast.

Loewen has created site-specific dance theater inthe ballroom twice before, but this time the audience will also descend to thecavernous basement where the “turners” trained with mats, rings, ropes andtrampolines. Loewen sees this as the graceful ballroom’s underbelly, a site forsweat, grit, risk and the ambition to fly free. The most striking sight in thebasement today is a gigantic climbing wall, a spectacular vertical dance floor.The audience, divided into groups, will move from spot to spot while thedancers use the room’s elements in unusual ways, each gymnastic apparatusrepresenting a kind of station in a pageant-like meditation on place and time.Then everyone will gather for a last dance in the ballroom with its ownintimations of (im)mortality.

Trace Elementswill be performed Friday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, Sept. 19, at 7 and9:30 p.m., at Turner Hall, 1034 N. Fourth St. Bob Teske, director of the MilwaukeeCounty Historical Society, will give a pre-show talk before each performance.Prices range from $15 to $25. A 6 p.m. fish fry is included with a $40 ticketon Friday. Seating is limited. For tickets, call (414) 271-0712 or visitwww.wildspacedance.org.

This summer, choreographers Betty Salamun of DanceCircus and Roxy Kess of Xalaat Africa created a 35-minuteprogram of combined African and modern dance for nine youngsters aged 9-17. Itwill be presented on Sunday, Sept. 20, at the SoHi Family Festival, south of Highland on North 27th Street.