Danceworks Performance MKE Examines How We Label Self and Others

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Danceworks Performance MKE "Sobriquet"

Danceworks Performance MKE "Sobriquet"

Sobriquet” is the title for a collection of world premieres by members of Danceworks Performance MKE and guests, a 90-minute blend of video and live performance running May 7-8 and 13-15 in the Danceworks Studio Theatre. It closes a strong first season under Christal Wagner’s artistic directorship.

Wagner’s preferred definition of the word sobriquet, she says, is “a nickname, sometimes assumed but often given by another, that is descriptive.” She and the company have been re-evaluating “how we label ourselves and other people.”

“Coming out of the pandemic,’ she explains, “the company members all need to heal ourselves before we can be ready for the audience. It’s been important for us to do work that’s about personal investigation. And isn’t that why art exists? Often an artist, in whatever form, is making the art for themselves, then inviting people to witness it.”

The season’s opener, Fight or Flight, offered tools for anxiety management. Then Sonder asked us to respect one another as equally complex. Sobriquet, she says, “explores queerness, identity, and the divide we feel within the different parts of ourselves.”

Gaining Intimacy, Empathy

She’s embraced the Danceworks tradition of inviting company dancers to choreograph “because through that process we gain intimacy and empathy for our colleagues. As someone who practices freudenfreude (the act of taking joy in someone else’s success), it’s a joy to see what my company members create, and to be an active witness to their process.”

Her dance contribution to Sobriquet is in three movements. The first, she explains, is “on the self-confidence you neglect to give yourself, something I’m struggling with daily.” The second addresses “the side of yourself that you don’t want to acknowledge, especially in your artistry.”

The third is on the need for diverse representations. “When we don’t allow people to be who they are in all their many, many ways, then we aren’t allowed to move into those spaces ourselves,” she says. “If you don’t know what “blue” is, can you know that the sky is blue?”

Pansexual, Polyamorous, Homoromantic is the working title for dancer/choreographer Nekea Leon’s piece. “It’s what I believe myself to be,” she explains. “I don’t believe in labels but if I have to have a label so someone can understand, these are the words I have, as of now. My piece is inspired by my journey of queerness, navigating where I was in high school when I had that idea, and where I was in college, and where I am in my adult life. I use flashbacks where you see glimpses of my experiences.”

In form, it’s mostly trios, with interludes in which the dancers face upstage to see themselves on film.  The audience sees the films, too, but Leon’s point is that they’re for the dancers. The audience witnesses the artists’ work toward self-understanding.

Dance artist Cedar Becher uses “trans non-binary” for self-description. They wish they’d had those words while growing up. Becher doesn’t like the label choreographer. “I’m curating with my collaborators,” is their description of the choreographic process.

Their piece consists of structured improvisations. “I was interested in the way that queerness can mean something completely different to everyone who takes it on as a label,” they tell me. “That’s why I like it. I can say I’m queer and it relates to my sexuality but also to my gender, and I don’t have go into details if I don’t want to. I was very specific about having only queer people in the cast, so we could have a space that was specifically for us to relate and mix and work. My one priority is to take care of them while creating something together, and while building relationships between all the people in the room.”

“So the piece is about what I call ‘queer care.’ It’s how we care for each other as queer people, as we know we have to do because we don’t have all the support that other people do, or all the understanding, or the being able to be seen. And how does queer care cultivate queer joy? We have to push through the sadness, through the hardship, to get to that joy. And we have to embody that joy.”

Queer Relations

Choreographer Chancie Cole’s piece has a major film element. Non-danced scenes of intimate connections between a variety of people, some in the dance studio, others in nature, extend the live dance sections. “It’s a piece about love and queer relationships,” she says quietly. “Let me just show you.”

Jade Charon, a Milwaukee native who founded an acclaimed New York City dance company and just finished a teaching residency at Danceworks, created a piece for Sobriquet. Charon is an activist artist working to improve life for, especially, young Black women. Leon, a dancer in the piece, describes her role as entering “a dreamlike state in which I’m having a conversation with my ancestors who are trying to help me get back to place of self-confidence and belief in myself.”

Elizabeth Roskopf, an Asian American adoptee, will dance her story, choreographed in collaboration with Madison’s Li Chiao-Ping, on film shot and edited by Wagner. The Danceworks Youth Performance Company with choreographer Gabi Sustache will address labels in a live piece and a video piece. The all-ages Danceworks Intergenerational Company with choreographer Gina Laurenzi will do that live.

Danceworks Studio Theatre is at 1661 N. Water St. For times and tickets, visit danceworksmke.org or call 414-277-8480 ext. 6025