Ashley Ray Garcia’s 10-Part ‘For the Wolves’

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It’s been a week since I saw and thoroughly enjoyed For the Wolves, a thematically unified string of dances choreographed by Ashley Ray Garcia. I’ve always enjoyed Garcia’s dancing as a member of both Danceworks Performance MKE and Wild Space Dance Company. I loved her contribution as a dance maker to the 2021 Milwaukee Fringe Festival. But now I also know her as a dance thinker.

Her excellent cast of eight was entirely young and female. The hour long, intermission-free concert unfolded like a music album or a play. It was composed of four premieres and five revivals of pieces created since 2021 and revisited here as stages in an emotional journey. 

“We show the stories of the women from our past, the women of today, and the hope for the women of our future through their resiliency and strength,” writes Garcia in her program note. The program also included a poem by Garcia titled “Red as we go.” To quote from the poem: “In these skirts/Red blood from my veins/Red blood from my legs/Red blood boils/As we stand in the flames/Sisters bound by resiliency.” It also explains the dancers’ costumes. Each dancer had a red dress concealed beneath a dress of blue or green. The red is glimpsed in flashes during the show’s first half and fully exposed toward the end. 

The Wolves are the women who exercise resiliency and strength as they seek to create and control their lives with a freedom equal to that enjoyed by men. Women are forced to hide so much, yes. Even here, in an artwork, in the parts of the show where rage or despair is represented, the expert dancing, the music, and the wit of the choreographic choices make acceptable expression out of what might not play so well off-stage.

I’ll remember the excellence of the dancing and the brilliant choices of musical accompaniment. The style of dance was highly theatrical, almost storytelling, no cool abstraction, no movement for movement’s sake, no showing off, but an outpouring that takes hard-won dance skills for granted.

Radical Opening

The opening was radical for a dance concert. It included no dancers. The audience in the intimate Danceworks Studio Theatre watched red lighting slowly creep into the dim white light on the bare stage floor with its black-curtained backdrop, as we listened to Judy Garland singing “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries,” belting as only Garland could that “you live and you laugh at it all.” The pain and irony of her rendition saturate you.  Nothing more was needed for this overture to land.

Then seven women entered in the dark. Blue-tinged light revealed Emma Becker, Koree Brosig, Kasey Eckhardt, Lauren Fleury, Abby Knueppel, Kalista Roling, and Katie Speltz. All were unknown to me. They worked together beautifully in dark blue dresses. The mood was serious. The music was “Legions (War)” by cellist Zoë Keating. The dance was titled “To Sink or Float.” Swaying bodies, arms reaching, fingers grasping, bodies sinking, rolling on the floor—it introduced the theatrical, athletic style of the whole show, and its message.

Roling lied there while the others left. To a tune by the Jackie Gleason orchestra titled “Little Girl,” featuring a yearning saxophone, Roling danced a sad solo titled “Even in Art.” She dragged herself along the floor, stood as if weighted, her body aching to express, pushing herself into the studio’s walls, only to sink again. She found her energy and, after virtuosic spins, pulled a red scarf from under her dress, blindfolded herself with it, listened, sensed, explored her body tentatively, and fell back to the floor. 

“Fountain of Youth” brought girlfriends Eckhardt, Fleury, Knueppel and Speltz to join Roling in a playful romp with deliberate silliness that had me smiling big. Brosig joined as a featured soloist, hips swinging free, even a lift. But the end was sad, just two friends left, their faces against the floor.

So it went, working hard, finding strength in groups, and finally unleashing the red. Dancer Summer Feil joined the dance company for that scene titled “In These Skirts,” which ended in defiant resolve. In the closing scene, set to Hana Stretton’s “Wail” and titled “Returning to Her,” they helped one another climb walls and turn cartwheels in midair. But the feeling was “it won’t be easy.”

Highlights for me were two solo dances set to great standards. Becker hurled her body in outrage and grief to Garland’s rendition of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile.” It was the turning point of the show, and Garcia titled it “Do You All Love Me Yet?” And Speltz’ heroic red-violet solo to Edith Piaf’s towering “Non, je ne regret rien” (No, I Regret Nothing).

Garcia staged the curtain call to Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera (What will be, will be).” The crowd cheered with abandon.