Photo by Nathaniel Davauer
Milwaukee Ballet - Connect
Milwaukee Ballet - Connect
From artistic director Michael Pink’s in-person welcome—a humble litany of thanks to all who’d help make Milwaukee Ballet’s return to the Marcus Center’s big stage possible—through two terrific world premieres and the revival of a sublimely comic work premiered by the company in 2012, all virtuosic, all danced to perfection, all dressed with great lighting and costumes, this was a kind of holy night, a night for gratitude and wonder, a blessed ray of hope.
The program’s title was “Connect”; human connection was the aim. It ran just four nights, Oct. 28-31, the first show in what Pink calls a “Season of Inspiration.” The pandemic continues, but the plan is that the Marcus Center will remain the setting.
As for human connection, let me thank the kind man at the entrance to the parking structure, and the warm folks that checked my vaccination card and ID, found and scanned my ticket, helped me to my seat, and kept gentle watch so that everyone in the hall stayed masked and comfortable.
It’s infinitely easier to take your seat now. There’s a spacious aisle through the entire hall midway back, and a couple of small aisles down through the seating areas. It changes the character of the hall a bit, too; it feels less class-conscious.
Forward-Looking, Contemporary
Connect was the kind of show that Pink normally presents in the spring: forward-looking contemporary ballets by well-respected younger choreographers with something to say. But there was something special: from start to finish, you could feel the dancers’ honest happiness at being back on the Marcus Center stage before a big responsive crowd.
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Human connections: dancer and choreographer, dancer and dancer, dancer and audience. The dancers were the heart of it. The world premieres were created for these humans. Some had played roles in the revival’s premiere. Every dancer had at least one featured moment. They were unquestionably up to it.
Choreographer Dani Rowe, an Australian native based in San Francisco, wrote in her program note that her new work, Chaminade, “is a physical and emotional reply to the technical splendor, passion and wonderful femininity” of the compositions for solo piano by Cécile Chaminade that provided the accompaniment. The recorded performance by pianist Joanne Polk created such ravishing cascades of sound it was hard to believe a single human could produce it. Each of the episodes danced by Lizzie Tripp and Benjamin Simoens, Barry Molina and Parker Brasser-Vos, and Lahna Vanderbush and Davit Hovhanissyan, and by the trio of Alana Griffith, Marie Harrison-Collins and Daniella Maarraoui, filled the huge open playing space with moves as technically challenging, thrilling, and beautiful.
Italian native Mauro di Candia’s Purple Fools is a sensationally creative, laugh-out-loud attack on cowardice and conformity. The characters belong to an imaginary snobbish society. They’re lonely, cruel and quick to mock any faux pas. Classical pop tunes accompanied the virtuosic pratfalls and ballet parodies danced by Griffith, Hovhannisyan, Josiah Cook, Randy Crespo, Garrett Glassman, Elizabeth Harrison, Itzel Hernandez, Annia Hidalgo, and Kristen Marshall, all dressed to kill and wearing wigs that spewed white power with every bobble or collapse. What looked ridiculous to us was deadly serious to them. Good thing they don’t have guns, I thought.
America’s Darrell Grand Moultrie dreamed up moves to match great jazz and swing works by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Adolph Green and Betty Comden in his soaring new work, Flight Anew. What looks at first like show dancing turns quickly into soul dancing: nothing’s guarded, nothing’s held back. The audience cheered throughout.
The cast included Brasser-Vos, Cook, Crespo, Glassman, Harrison-Collins, Hidalgo, Simoens and Vanderbush, joined by Isaac Allen, Craig Freigang, Marize Fumero, Francesca Morris, Michael Rinderle, Hailee Rodriguez and Ransom Wilkes-Davis. I’ve named them all because they all deserve honor.
I was particularly moved by the trio of Crespo, Fumero, and Glassman interpreting a smooth, slow version of Ellington’s “Satin Doll”; and by Hidalgo and Wilkes-Davis majestic performance to a majestic arrangement of Ellington’s “Solitude”; and by Ben Simoen’s touching, generous solo to Green and Comden’s “Lucky to Be Me.”
