Meaningful High-Level Dance Art in UWM’s ‘Winterdances: Resilience’

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Photo by Christal Wagner

Jacquez Orr-McKinney

Jacquez Orr-McKinney

Many of Milwaukee’s contemporary dance artists are graduates of the UWM Peck School of Arts dance program, and the artistic directors of many of our longstanding contemporary dance companies were among the eager audiences at the university’s annual Winterdances concert last weekend, in which graduate and undergraduate students perform meaningful, high-level dance art.

I love these boundary pushing concerts. I haven’t been able to attend in a while, and I’m glad to report that this year’s show was as good, if not better, than any I’ve seen, in terms of imagination, execution and relevance. It remains a great way to prepare students for lives in art, and to build and invigorate dance audiences. The cheering at the final curtain was the sort you’d hear at a major sports event or superstar pop concert.

Resilience was the show’s timely title. It offered four world premieres.

The evening began with a preshow talk by the internationally celebrated guest choreographer David Roussève, a longtime friend and collaborator in Los Angeles with the show’s artistic director Maria Gillespie. His piece, Care, was the concert’s grand finale.

Uniting Individuals

Gillespie is a UWM dance professor now, and the founding director of two Milwaukee dance groups. “Dance holds the capacity to unite individuals,” she said in her welcome, “and to create change by transforming ideas into action. We offer these dances tonight as manifestations of resilience through the storm.”

Care, Roussève said, explores ballroom and vogue dance. Wikipedia describes vogue as the “highly stylized, modern house dance originating in the late 1980s that evolved out of the Harlem ballroom scene of the 1960s, inspired by the poses of models in fashion magazines.”

Roussève described it as “one of the most original art forms I know, and really challenging, like ballet. I’ve long been interested in the ballroom community as a response to massive social oppression, and in how that community continues to take care of itself. They create houses and families, usually with a trans leader. We’ve made much progress as a country in terms of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ issues, but now we seem to be receding, and I wanted to do something regarding that.”

Diverse & Resilient

To ground the piece locally, he sought direction from Milwaukee’s Diverse & Resilient, which he described as “a phenomenal grassroots community institution that does everything to support the gay and bisexual communities. They work with the trans community for visibility and health care.”

The organization introduced him to local ballroom artists Richard ‘Buda’ Brasfield, Jacques Infiniti-Hall (Misrahi), and DaCosta Martin. These vogue virtuosos shared the stage with the students. Brasfield also choreographed Care’s prologue and joyous finale. “The piece could not have been possible without their contributions,” Roussève said.

Resilience opened with UWM Associate Professor Mair Culbreth’s Be My Ground, When the World Lets Go. Ropes hung from the grid high above the UWM mainstage theatre’s wide, deep stage. Fourteen student dancers courageously, trustingly strapped themselves into the ropes and danced and partnered while swinging at varying heights in gigantic arcs across the stage, in and out of the wings, and over the front rows of audience, “exploring the existential anxiety provoked by the possibility of falling, as a metaphor for moments of personal and socio-cultural upheaval,” say Culbreth’s program notes, “and how we create ground for one another when stability is no longer guaranteed.”

Migration and Belonging

Ishmael Konney, a Ghanaian dance artist recruited to the USA by Ohio State’s International Studies program, teaches dance at UWM and performs internationally. His interest, he writes, “is the fusion of traditional Ghanaian storytelling with contemporary dance forms.” His Ghana Must Go was inspired by the 1983 expulsion of Ghanaians from Nigeria, and “examines migration as an ongoing search for belonging.” Eight students danced it with heavy stuffed bags atop their heads, “metaphors for all that migrants carry inside them.” Eventually, some carefully share the contents, “revealing how displacement can create new forms of community.”

Dawn Springer is a master performer and dance instructor at UWM and Milwaukee Ballet. Her Harps That Once was inspired by Irish poet Thomas Moore's 17th century lament over his country’s seizure by England. The dance for eight, she writes, “examines cultural inheritance and loss…and touches on all that resonates after structures and ideals fracture.” Fabulous.

Then Care, a wild-ass scream of a piece, rigorous, hopeful, deeply embraced by the young dancers, summed it all up. Four cheers.