Photo Credit: Nathaniel Davauer
Milwaukee Ballet closed its first half-century last weekend with a look back, not only to a work from the mid-1980s that the company has staged before but to a work that itself looks back, with 20th century wit, to ballet’s establishment as an art form in 18th century France; and longer back, if you consider the 16th century source of choreographer Bruce Wells’ ballet adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s a time of kings, queens, courtiers, arranged marriages, male privilege and highly defined gender roles. Music by the 19th century romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn, and a cast that’s far more fairy than human, complete this long view of ballet history from neoclassical to modern.
And postmodern. The exception to the old-school sociopolitical order of the ballet’s woodland fairyland is the fairy Puck, exceptionally danced by Barry Molina in his largest and greatest performance to date. Though ordered about by his boss, the Fairy King Oberon, he’s constitutionally uncontrollable: a free spirit prone to screw-ups. This makes him the most human character on stage. As Oberon, Randy Crespo was grand in his ferocious execution of every challenging classical ballet step given to men for centuries. You could read it as a sympathetic lampoon of Louis XIV’s fabled self-regard as he danced the lengthy, extravagant ballets he made for himself to perform. Molina, no less virtuosic in his twirls and acrobatics, seemed the non-binary embodiment of the sheer joy of movement, of being alive, of the reasons for dancing.
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A magisterial Annia Hidalgo bestowed great integrity on the immortal Fairy Queen Titania who, after humiliation by her immortal husband Oberon, loves him again (as he does her). Their climactic pas-de-deux was all you could hope for in such dances. Alana Griffith was terrific in the comic role of the unlucky human Helena, pursuing a guy who disdains her and fleeing an unwelcome spellbound pursuer. Patrick Howell, as her heart’s desire, was her perfect partner in laugh-out-loud comic virtuosity. The stage often burst with dancers, many of them children. There was much beauty in the choreography, designs, and orchestral playing under Andrew Sill and in the singing of Kathryn Henry, Ashley Puenner and the Milwaukee Children’s Choir.
In Shakespeare’s comedy, Bottom, the actor-transformed-to-an-ass, is the centerpiece: love is folly. Puck dances at the heart of Wells’ ballet. Spring can be illusory, but summer comes and goes. And love is hope.
