Photo Credit: Mark Frohna
“I was searching for as much opportunity as possible for all of our dancers,” Milwaukee Ballet Artistic Director Michael Pink says about his programming choices for Encore, the company’s upcoming season finale. “The three programs we’ve made since February have been a gift in terms of the dancers tackling challenges,” he continues. “It’s been a great period of growth for them.”
While the pandemic kept many other dancers taking classes on Zoom to stay in shape, Milwaukee Ballet dancers worked live in discreet groups, masked and distanced, in a building that met every safety requirement. Encore is the company’s third hour-long, intermission-free performance for a small live audience to be presented this year in its home theatre at the Baumgartner Center for Dance. The first, To the Pointe, was purely classical; the second, Re:Gen, entirely contemporary. Encore offer virtuosic highlights from company history in both styles.
What’s new is that our city’s health inspectors have approved an audience seating capacity of 33% for Encore, up from 25% for the others. This means that 66 people can attend each of the thirteen performances from June 3-13. Encore will also be available for home screening On Demand, but this is an extraordinary opportunity to experience the dancers up close.
The program includes the famous “dance for ten” from Raymonda, choreographed in 1898 by the Russian genius Marius Petipa to music by Alexander Glazunov. Often performed independently from the full ballet, it’s a spectacular 20-minute showpiece of flash dance and beauty meant to celebrate the central lovers’ wedding. It’s not been seen here in over a decade.
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Encore will also feature the celebrated “peasant pas de deux” from Giselle, one of the greatest and most challenging classical ballets of the 19th century. Pink chose the traditional Petipa choreography over his own more radical version. It’s not been seen here for decades. Fortunately, Pink’s classically styled “grand pas de deux” from Don Quixote, last performed here in 2014, is also on the program.
The show’s contemporary work is just as exciting. Aleix Mañé, a young choreographer from the Catalonia Region of Spain, won the company’s international choreographic competition Genesis in 2019 with his moving ExiliO. The dancers play Catalonian exiles in flight for their lives during the Spanish Civil War which brought the dictator Franco to power in the mid-20th century. Mañé had family members in that situation. A powerful central duet from the dance is included in Encore.
In contrast, A Day in the Life is American choreographer Trey McIntyre’s heartening “concept album” of dances set to Beatles songs. Milwaukee Ballet danced it here in 2016. It’s about growing up. Three excerpts—“Blackbird,” “Honey Pie,” and “Julia”—will be revisited in Encore, danced by the same artists who are just a little older.
Pink added a sixth dance, Nous Sommes, when he learned that its choreographer, Jimmy Gamonet, had passed from Covid. Gamonet, a Peruvian native, is best known as the co-founder of the prestigious Miami City Ballet. He also worked with Milwaukee Ballet in the late 1990s, choreographing Carmen and Concerto for la Donna, and staging Nous Sommes, a pas de deux he’d created in the ‘80s. “It’s very beautiful and bloody hard,” says Pink. The title translates as “We Are.”
For show times and ticket arrangements, visit milwaukeeballet.org
