Milwaukee Ballet’s ‘Casanova’ More Loving Than Lustful

Casanova was a musician, writer, teacher, thinker; deeply caring and a more complex character than ballet generally attempts to bring to life.

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I was lucky enough last weekend to see Casanova at the Friday night opening with Randy Crespo in the title role, and then again at the Saturday matinee with Josiah Cook as Casanova. I was utterly transfixed on both occasions. There was so much excellence in every aspect of the storytelling—choreography, acting, dancing, music, lighting, sets and costumes—it was more than I could absorb in one viewing. Great art is like that. You have to go back. 

I can now say it’s one of the most moving ballets I’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing. The British dancer-turned-choreographer Kenneth Tindell built this celebrated ballet in collaboration with scholars of Giacomo Casanova’s extensive memoires and the history of 18th century Europe. Tindell’s Casanova is a good man, able to love men and women, not salacious or exploitative. His reputation as a masher is ridiculous. He’s a musician, a writer, a teacher, a thinker; he’s forward looking, deeply caring, far more loving than lustful, and a more complex, novelistic character than ballet generally attempts to bring to life.

Tindell’s Casanova is just a very human character, pulled in many directions, elevated, battered, driven, lost and found and abandoned in a time not that much different from our own. Oh, it seems that class divisions were stricter, the Church had more power, and ideas were more thoroughly policed. Nonetheless, Enlightenment era philosophers, scientists and artists prevailed. This ballet’s final image of Casanova standing on his writing table, happy, while countless pages of his memoires fall from the upper reaches of the Marcus Center’s Uihlein Hall, and all the people who mattered to him and to whom he’d mattered – played, of course, by Crespo’s and Cook’s fellow company members—moved through the golden lighting as if across his mind’s eye—well, it had me in tears. It brought me to my own life, as I’m sure it did for many in the audience.

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Music Never Stops

The ballet is in two acts but the flow within each act is constant. You hardly notice scenic changes, though the elements are huge. The dancers hold your focus in the shifting light. Most of all, the music never stops. The awesome score by Kerry Muzzey for full orchestra would sometimes work on me subconsciously. At other times, it played a leading role. 

Dancing and acting were inseparable. Movements ranged from mime to the most extreme ballet athleticism, constantly moving the complex story forward.

The Casanova role is huge. He almost never leaves the stage. Randy Crespo is an older, more experienced company dancer, a Leading Artist cast in principle roles. Josiah Cook graduated from the younger Second Company to an apprenticeship in 2019 and to the main company in 2020. In my view, Crespo rose to greatness in this role, and Cook’s future looks stellar. Crespo’s more experienced Casanova and Cook’s more innocent portrayal worked equally well for me. Both made perfect sense.

Let me add that the role demands a staggering number of overhead lifts, and an unusual variety of in-air supporting in crazy positions of sometimes more than one partner simultaneously. And equal credit goes to those partners: Marize Fumero, Kristen Marshall, Marie Harrison-Collins, Nanaho Nakajima, Jacqueline Sugianto, Lahna Vanderbush, Alana Griffith, and Lizzie Tripp-Molina, all superb, all unique in their important contributions.

Full Agency

In this ballet, all of the women characters have full agency in their decisions to have sex with Casanova. Most of them take an aggressive role, for various reasons. Each has her own story. 

Parker Brasser-Vos played a gay aristocrat who draws out Casanova’s bisexuality. As a gay man, I’m glad to say that homosexuality was treated with complete respect in this ballet. Late in the second act, when a distressed Casanova tries to drown his sorrows in ambisexual polyamory, there’s no judgement on the choreographer’s part, nor is all the orgiastic action sensationalized.

Something Cook told me in an interview about the show took on new meaning for me as I watched. He said that Tindall’s choreography felt so natural that dancers would joke in the rehearsal room that if a move was too difficult it was because the dancer wasn’t doing it correctly. I began to see the joke. In episodes of ambisexual attraction, attention isn’t called, the choreography looks natural. If anything was asked for, it was empathy.

Brasser-Vos gave a beautiful performance, as did the entire company. I want to honor Garrett Glassman for his moving performance as a priest tortured by the Inquisition for reading a banned book. When opened, the book shined a light on the reader’s face. And I’ll never forget Troy Santulli, making his Milwaukee Ballet debut as the tall, very ominous Grand Inquisitor.

Artistic Director Michael Pink named this season “The Season of Love and Lust.” To me, this first show was all love