Photo by Rachel Malehorn
Milwaukee Ballet Company - Encore, Aubade, 2023
Milwaukee Ballet Company. (Encore, Aubade, 2023)
Milwaukee Ballet will present a new Encore concert in its 172-seat studio theatre for two weekends from January 30 through February 8. What’s Encore? Artistic Director Michael Pink describes the fledgling biannual program this way:
“One of the benefits of negotiating what we could and couldn’t do through covid was to use our studio space much sooner than we’d planned. We said, “Let’s bring back some of those pieces we love from the classical repertoire we’ve done, and from the new works created in our Genesis program. So, we did, and it was a very unique experience for the dancers and the audience. That’s developed into what we now call Encore. And this year we’re adding an all-new work by one of our company artists.”
Two company artists with major roles in the show shared their thoughts. This is Parker Brasser-Vos’s 15h season, and his fifth as a leading artist. It’s Kristen Marshall’s eighth season. Both began as young dancers in the second company, MBII. Both will encore works they’ve co-created.
Audience Favorite
Case in point: in the 2022 Genesis choreographic competition both were cast in choreographer DaYoung Jung’s “Vignettes” which won the Audience Award for Favorite Piece.
“That year was just post-Covid, so we performed it in masks, which was a unique challenge,” Brasser-Vos remembers. “We were just grateful to be opening the doors, to have guest choreographers come, and to show what we can do. DaYoung was totally open to what we had to bring to the piece. She played to our strengths and listened to us. We’re doing an abbreviated version, things the audience will clue into most.”
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That includes two trios—he’ll perform in one, Marshall in the other—and a pas de deux which he describes as “intimate, not flashy or explosive, very much a dialogue. It’s intricate and tricky, especially the lady’s footwork and where the man puts his hands to keep her on balance and like upside down into a spin. As an artist, I like returning to a work because I’ve grown, hopefully, and I feel like I can bring another layer of depth to it. That’s my job.”
Says Marshall, “What I love most is the athleticism. There’s lots of extreme, unconventional positions to be lifted in, which I always enjoy. I’m excited to do it again, after a few years, to see if I’ve still got it. I have new male partners, so I have to think of it in a different way. I get to analyze it a little more.”
Rising Star
She’ll also dance the world premiere of Where the Light Touches by company artist Eric Figueredo, whom Pink calls “our rising choreographic star.”
Marshall danced last season in Figueredo’s first work, Interlace. It was a hit. Pink says that when he saw Figueredo working on this new piece with leading artist Marize Fumero, he knew that Figueredo’s choreographic encore belonged in Encore.”
Marshall will partner with company dancer Marco Micov. “It’s a unique rehearsal process,” she explains, “because Eric will perform it with Marize in alternate shows. He’s rehearsing it himself while he’s rehearsing us, so it’s very collaborative. His Interlace was very fast and energetic. This one has a different pace. It’s more about lengthening the limbs. Eric loves extreme long lines. He says he pictured this pas de deux as like the black spot in the sun. He was envisioning this couple as that black spot moving within a mass of sunlight.”
She’ll also recreate her role in “The Kids Have Names,” created 2023 by former Milwaukee Ballet leading artist and resident choreographer Tim O’Donnell. “It’s totally different from the other stuff,” she says. “The music is Radiohead. It’s in jazz shoes. We all chose our own high school versions to play. I’m a sporty girl. It’s uplifting and lighthearted, at first. Then it turns and makes you really think about what kids have to go through at school today.”
Classical Encore
Encore also includes classical pieces. Pink chose a pas de deux from The Talisman by 19th century Russian master Marius Petipa for several younger company artists to dance. “It’s like putting your younger ball players on the team to give them a chance to see how they fit in,” he says. “It’s a nice way for us all to get confident about what the future might look like.”
Brasser-Vos is featured in an excerpt from Napoli by August Bournonville, the 19th century Danish choreographer best known for La Sylphide. “It’s interesting to see the egalitarian nature of his work,” says Brasser-Vos. “There’s very little difference in what was demanded of his male and female dancers. It’s side-by-side dancing with very intricate footwork and tricky stage patterns. It’s been preserved, like Shakespeare. We do it as it was. It’s beautiful in its simplicity, and its simplicity is a hidden complexity.”
Matinee and evening performances from January 30-February 8 at Milwaukee Ballet’s Baumgartner Center for Dance, 128 N. Jackson Street in the Third Ward. For times and tickets, visit milwaukeballet.org or call the Ballet Box Office at 414-902-2103.
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