Knitting Art in Wild Space Dance Company’s ‘Skip Stitch’

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Photo by Mark Frohna

Wild Space Dance Company's ‘Skip Stitch’

Wild Space Dance Company's ‘Skip Stitch’

Wild Space Dance Company had perfect weather for last week’s opening night of Skip Stitch, its site-specific performance on the top floor of the former Eagleknit knitting mill in Walker’s Point. The rain had stopped, and a gorgeous sky was visible through the windows that run the full length of the factory’s western, northern and eastern walls.

To tender preshow music, audience members wandered the fourth floor, enjoying views of the city. The Hoan Bridge and lake looked especially dreamy. The vast wooden floor of the room was bright with sunset light, broken by shadows from thirty-some pillars spread evenly across the former workspace for hundreds of knitters from 1928 till 1991.

We sat in folding chairs at the room’s south end. Composer/musician Paul Westfahl and his wide array of percussion instruments and sound equipment were stationed near us. 

A sustained note and the tinkling of tiny cymbals accompanied a dozen dancers as they spaced themselves along the western wall facing east. They began to walk in ever-shifting patterns and groupings back and forth across the enormous space, at varying speeds and for changing distances, partly or completely vanishing behind a pillar depending on the view from your seat, but always at a distance so your eye was drawn in all directions. This knitting and weaving of patterns was compelling, as was Westfahl’s music-making.

Pulsating, Emotional Music

As the sky outside darkened, floor level theatre lights brightened, adding shadows. Westfahl’s now pulsating music grew very emotional. Dancers crawled or pulled themselves along the floor, or leapt, or swayed, or carried others or were carried by others. Ideas of near and far took hold as individual dancers moved close to us before retreating. The room was so big, they could move a million ways. 

So far, Skip Stitch was about patterns, I thought. The dancers could be birds flocking. They reminded me of nameless children playing in a field. They actually began to play with colored knitting yarn, wrapping strings of it around the pillars and from one pillar to the next, enough to block off passage.

Then everyone left except Katelyn Altmann, co-choreographer with Dan Schuchart of Skip Stitch. Now, as soloist in a piece where acting choices were at least as important as dancing, she was very much an individual, an artist questioning her ability to create something worthy with her bag of paper flowers. In his despairing string and percussion accompaniment, Westfahl’s empathy was evident. 

After that, the room darkened, the yarn blockage was removed, and we were directed to carry our chairs to the center of the space, and place them facing east or west, our choice. A different performance would happen on each side, we were told. Then we’d move our chairs again to the opposite side and those performances would be repeated. We’d all see all the action but in different order.

Handling hat, coat, chair and notebook slowed me. Most of the audience members had chosen the west side, so I placed my chair facing east but at the south end, near Westfahl’s music-making. I watched dancers hold what looked metal drumsticks, touching the shoulders of the dancer beside them, then dropping the sticks and running away as they clattered on the floor. Others retrieved the sticks and handed them back as the runners returned, and the scene was repeated over and over. They might be the ghosts of the workers in this knitting factory, repeating tasks like workers everywhere. 

Shaking Fists

The action on the west side of the room helped seal that idea. The dancers shook fists as if in rage and formed a line. Were they strikers hoping to unionize? I can say that the dancing was committed, often impressive, but abstract. I was pretty mystified.

Kind audience members helped me make the final move. We carried our chairs to the far north end, facing the place we’d started from. A spotlight rose near our feet as a figure in shadows walked the long corridor toward us. It was the eminent Milwaukee dancer/choreographer/educator Dawn Springer. She proceeded to perform a piece she’d choreographed for herself in 2009, titled Try, Try Again, set to recordings of Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone and Joan Baez’ Sailing. Like Altmann in her solo early in the show, Springer played an aspiring dance artist struggling to believe in herself. It ends sadly. She seems to give up. Then you realize she’s just performed a beautiful original dance.

The Wild Space Company filled the space for a finale with dancing to thundering drumming by Westfahl and brighter theatrical lighting by Colin Gawronski. But the show ended spooky as, like ghosts, all the dancers walked into shadows and silence.

Skip Stitch was a show about art making: the search for form; the hard, sometimes maddening work; and the struggle for faith.