Lake Arts Project performances are potentially transformative in the making and giving. The HeART of War, the company’s concert last weekend, grew from workshops between U.S. military veterans suffering from post-deployment trauma and high school sophomores from the Alliance School, the MPS charter school for students traumatized by bullying because of ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity, religion or other factors. Add dancer Adam McKinney’s DNAWorks, an international art and service organization that uses movement as a means of healing. Add performers, including army veteran actors from Milwaukee’s Feast of Crispian; students from Milwaukee Ballet School & Academy; dancers from the pre-professional Milwaukee Ballet II; Milwaukee Ballet professionals Barry Molina and Lizzie Tripp; and visiting dancers drawn by the choreographers Katharina Abderholden, Thom Dancy, Ashley McQueen, Catey Ott Thompson, Bonnie Watson, and Lake Arts Project directors Jennifer Miller and Karl von Rabenau. Finally, add musicians Ryan Meisel and Ben Kramer and production director Matt Carr to this battalion.
“In a democracy, we need to know the stories of our warriors,” said Feast of Crispian’s Jim Tasse before the performance. The Alliance School students broaden the meaning of warrior.
Army veteran Tim Schleis sat onstage in a chair marked “reserved” during Miller’s Beautiful Agony. He’s the reason for the dance. The women dancers know he stopped the rape of a Middle Easterner by a fellow NCO, an act for which he suffered professional consequences. That story isn’t danced; sorrow, gratitude and healing are. In Abderholden’s Le Petit Fou, scary circus music accompanied a squad in white masks living an anxious nightmare. Bang, all but one mask was stripped off, that of the “little fool” who kept going while the others lay dead.
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In von Rabenau’s beautiful Salvare Un’Anima featuring Moline and Tripp, dangerous humans overcame distrust to partner as dancers and lovers. In Catey Ott’s graceful I Will Be Okay, victims insisted they’d recover while Ryan Meisel’s saxophone screamed center stage. In Miller’s I’m Your Voice, Julio Pareto embodied the hurt of fellow performer, army veteran Carissa DiPietro who lost her daughter to domestic violence while serving. In hopeful contrast, Watson’s intricate, thrilling Enable to Function or Act showed dancers Madeleine Rhode, Sage Feldges, Ellie Kumar and Libby Flunker in top form: a tough, strong, proud, ready and able team. In Reclamation, McQueen and Dancy used handheld lighting, shadows and great dancing to take us to the heart of war. How is recovery possible?
