Photo Credit: Mark Frohna
Milwaukee’s new professional troupe, Danceworks Performance MKE (DPMKE), presented three works in its first concert, Out of Many, One, at the Jan Serr Studio last weekend. The unifying factor was that every work was created in collaboration with composer Allen Russell who, on violin and electronics, led a fine chamber orchestra of Dana DeBofsky (viola), Pat Reinholz (cello) and Barry Paul Clark (bassist). Their lush, live performance was an equal partner to the dancing.
Artistic director Dani Kuepper said in her welcoming speech that Russell’s beautiful 2019 collaborative work with DPMKE choreographer and dancer Gina Laurenzi, titled /,maskə’rad/ , had inspired her to make this program. A substantial excerpt from /,maskə’rad/ (the phonetic spelling of “masquerade”) opened the concert. As I wrote in my review of the premiere at Danceworks Studio last November, the subject is fear of self-revelation, of appearing different in a society suspicious of difference. A group of glamorously masked dancers is threatened and attracted when one of their tribe, danced by Elizabeth Roskopf, reveals her face and discovers new, freer, truer movement possibilities. Lovely in November, it looked gorgeous under the grand chandelier of the Jan Serr, against giant black curtains and Colin Gawronski’s lighting. Each character is fascinating, so this version’s smaller cast—Roskopf was joined by Alex Seager, Gabi Sustache, Joshua Yang and Laurenzi—was clarifying. Everything, even the music, seemed more confident.
The giant curtains opened. Choreographer Dawn Springer’s Meadow was set against the theater’s smashing view from on high of our city at night. Roskopf and Laurenzi were the sole performers in this challenging dance. Springer’s work is formal and fascinating. You’re caught by the ever-shifting movements, by the growing familiarity of patterns. Your mind races to possible meanings, and you lose track of time. Russell’s score was diffuse, dreamlike and ultimately heavenly. All that a body can do, it seems, can be done in this meadow, this city, beneath an unseen sky. What does life hold for two humans?
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Kuepper herself choreographed the title piece with 12 diverse DPMKE dancers. They entered one by one in their own street clothes, carrying chairs to use to remove their shoes, each differently trained and, together, rich in possibilities to be discovered over time. Kuepper is learning, she told me. “50-50,” she called it. She creates a movement: They make it theirs. This piece was playful; a witty game: generous, silly, serious and hopeful.
