Mauriah Kraker is a sterling addition to the growing number of fine dance makers in Milwaukee. Kitchendances, her new company, will debut on July 8-9 with a program titled Decimation Blues.
Kraker (rhymes with “rocker”) left her Milwaukee home at age 13 to train for the Olympics in rhythmic gymnastics. At 18, she represented the USA as team captain in the 2002 World Championships. “After that,” she says,” I vowed I was done with movement. I was pretty injured.” She started college at UW-Madison and eventually took a dance class. A teacher urged her to transfer to UW-Milwaukee’s program where her mentor was the late Ed Burgess. “He was so influential in how I choose to be perceived onstage,” Kraker says. “I choose to be seen; I choose to be honest.”
At Burgess’ urging, she moved to New York after graduation and was instantly hired by Pilobolus, the famously innovative company of dancer-gymnasts. She performed on “Conan O’Brian.” She left after two years, she says, “Because I wanted to do something more heartfelt.” She fell in love, traveled and made dances in East Asia and Europe, won acceptance to the Taipei National University of the Arts, had her heart broken, came home and was welcomed by Wild Space Dance Company director Debra Loewen who “dragged me back into the studio,” Kraker says. “Every day with Deb, I’m reminded to be curious.”
Decimation Blues will open with “SINKNG” (the “I” sunk, she says). It represents Kraker’s newest thoughts on material she’s developed recently. Improvised passages keep it immediate. “In my years as a gymnast,” she says, “every movement was known; there was no possibility of variation. Deb’s challenge to me is to let it live, let something new creep in.” A second solo, “Outer Dark,” will close the show. This cool but intensely dramatic, searching dance premiered in Wild Space’s spring concert, Reckless Wonders, where it seemed to capture her entire life. “I make the most sense to myself when I’m in a dance studio,” she says. “We all need a place like that.”
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Japanese choreographer Kensaku Shinohara admired Kraker’s recent work in New York and asked to make a dance for her. He’ll travel to Milwaukee to dance his Trio with Kraker and NYC dancer Quinn Dixon. Dancer Jose A. Luis will return from Chicago to recreate “High Plains,” a dance western he and Kraker made here in 2013 for Rooftop Dance.
8 p.m., July 8-9 at The BOX MKE, 311 E. Wisconsin Ave. Tickets are $10-$15 at the door or available online at kitchendances.bpt.me.
