Experimental Dance Theatre from Los Angeles in Milwaukee

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Photo by Brian Meinecke - mariagillespie.org

Gillespie + Nguyên + Williamson: 'to get there from here'

Gillespie + Nguyên + Williamson: 'to get there from here'

The spacious, two-storied rehearsal room in the Daync Academy in Walker’s Point, once Milwaukee Ballet’s workspace, was vibrant with lively conversation among many Milwaukee contemporary dance artists when my friend and I arrived last Saturday evening. Everyone was there to see two experimental works—one still in progress—by Maria Gillespie, Nguyen Nguyen, and Kevin Williamson. We were all excited and curious. This trio of choreographers, dancers, and college-level educators has been making original performance art together in Los Angeles for 20 years. For Gillespie, Milwaukee-based for over a decade now as a professor in UWM’s dance department and the founding director of Hyperlocal MKE and The Collaboratory, it’s meant a lot of trips back to California. 

Folding chairs were placed on three sides of the wide playing space. Side four was a two-storied blank wall. Video and slide projectors and a record player waited on the floor, just in front of our front row center seats, beside a wooden pole and plastic sacks of water. There was a big mound of dirt on the floor upstage. 

The room dimmed. The three performers crouched near our feet. The sound of rushing water—maybe ocean waves against a boat—overwhelmed the room. The entire upstage wall filled with a video that continued through the show, presenting scene after scene of each of the three performers moving alone through different wilderness settings in different seasons and different emotional states.  

Nguyen stood and attached four of the water bags to straps encircling his waist. Four more had already been strapped to the pole. It was several yards long. Gillespie and Williamson lifted and balanced it on Nguyen’s bare head. The rushing waves changed to somber orchestral music. In quiet lighting by Colin Gawronski, Nguyen carefully walked toward the upstage wall and video, balancing the water-weighted sacks draped around him. Gillespie walked closely behind him, but he didn’t need rescue.  

Nguyen seemed to land upstage. As he removed the props, Gillespie went to the wall. The video now showed a rugged cabin in a hillside field. She pressed her hands and leaned her head against its walls. Williamson, meanwhile, was struggling violently, as if on fire, rolling around on the floor or spinning fast and hard through the shadowy space. He’s tall and built like a football player. The impact was powerful. Then all three were crawling on the floor. They met and entangled their bodies, attempted to separate but failed, being intricately interconnected. They each appeared desperate to get there, wherever “there” is. 

Haunting Performance

That’s my too-crude description of the opening of to get there from here, a haunting performance the trio created in 2022 and continues to perform when the occasion arises. The printed program we received upon arrival provided crucial clues. The action “charts physical and emotional landscapes” in the life journeys of the three artists. As a refugee from Vietnam, Nguyen had to adjust to life in the USA. Gillespie had to embrace her formerly rejected Mexican lineage. Williamson had to accept his homosexuality.  

Their creative process is intimately collaborative. So when Gillespie buried herself in the dirt, the others pulled her out. Nguyen accepted Williamson’s tender touches. Gillespie and Williamson seemed to enjoy getting wet when Nguyen broke and shook a water sack. The show’s title might be reversible: “to get here from there,” since it’s about their journey to become the people they are today. But that journey is unending, I think they’re suggesting. 

Williamson delivered a text about taking a pill at night to keep from crying. Gillespie sang in English and gradually in Spanish and vocalized explosive blasts on her handheld microphone.   

Nguyen beautifully sang the theme of the work-in-progress that followed. In that piece, titled Wild Tongue, they shared their creative process with us. It’s a process of putting ideas into words, then words into non-literal, emotionally impactful, and physically impressive movement.  I say impressive because these middle-aged performers used every bit of their apparently tireless, extremely elastic, and strong bodies; and because the movements have style and grace. 

They wrote, then projected, word cues on the wall, such as “flourish,” “yearn” and “divest,” and made movement from them. They asked audience members what “tenderness” meant and translated the responses into movement. They built movement phrases that way. 

They used the record player for a vinyl recording of “We Three” by The Ink Spots, a song I loved in childhood. Its refrain—“My echo, my shadow, and me”—served both as self-description and, in this case, the roles these artists take for one another in their process. 

Their work reminded me of some of the best experimental theatre of the ‘70s and ’80s. I loved it. We need these living arts to share what can’t be shared in words alone. We need that sharing.