Milwaukee’s New Dance Company, Three Point Project

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Photo by Andrea Ryerson via Three Point Project - Instagram

Three Point Project

Three Point Project

Glad It’s Raining, the evening length dance concert presented last weekend by Three Point Project, was powerful evidence that Milwaukee has an important new dance company. It was founded last year by 27-year-old artistic director Ashley Tomaszewski whose previous years as a dancer and associate artistic director with Water Street Dance Milwaukee helped that group to greatness. Glad It’s Raining was the new group’s third performance in Milwaukee. They’ve also shown work in Los Angeles and Chicago.

I spoke with Tomaszewski shortly before last weekend’s premiere at the Danceworks Studio Theatre. “I’m really interested in presenting art,” she said, “but even more interested in facilitating a space for artists to create high caliber work in an environment that feels encouraging and nourishing. To bring stuff that’s happening in the world and happening to you as a person, and to work through that and use movement as a means to heal and connect—that’s really what interests me.”

Regarding the name Three Point Project, “I founded it with three roots to keep us grounded,” she explained. “First, that movement should deepen the connection we have with ourselves; second, that movement should help us understand others; and third, that movement should help us become better people in the world. This show is an extension of that root system.”

Free Mix of Styles

For Tomaszewski, movement means a free mix of classical ballet, contemporary dance, and physical theater. Her training at Butler University in Indianapolis was primarily in classical ballet and dance pedagogy. At graduation in 2018, she was offered a professional ballet contract on the West Coast. “But I decided I didn’t want to live my life in a tutu,” she said.

Instead, she accepted artistic director Morgan William’s offer to dance professionally with what is now Water Street Dance Milwaukee, along with an offer to teach at Studio One Dance Company in Wales, Wisconsin, where she’s now artistic director. Three Point Project is homed at Studio One, thanks to its owner Kelly Skaggs.

The Three Point Project main company dancers are Jo Brockway, Emma Domacinovich, Jade Eitel, and Greta Jenkins. Each has a role in the offstage operation, as well. Apprentice dancers Jonas Callies and Lili Ragen played vital roles in Glad It’s Raining, which also featured guest artists Olivia Kurth and Holly Lennertz, and guest apprentice Natalie Ketter. 

Knock-out Performance

And Glad It’s Raining opened with a knock-out performance by the 15 young women, aged 12-18, of the company’s professional training program. Titled Wall of Impossibility and choreographed by Tomaszewski, it addressed the roadblocks young woman face today. It was accompanied by the recorded voice of Michelle Obama, intercut with searing sound installations by the poet/musician AGF. Obama spoke with feeling about her own struggles with self-doubt, the questioning of her value as a woman. “We as women sometimes feel we have to do everything right,” she complained. “I had value when I was three years old, when I was seven, when I was twelve. Just do what’s before you. There’s power in what we do every day.”

Even more than by Obama, the audience was stunned by the dancers. These kids’ faces made it clear that they knew exactly what Obama meant. Fast-paced, full-bodied, furious, they moved courageously in a fusion of styles, fearful, determined, clutching their heads and stomachs. I mean, it was jaw-dropping.

What followed was a short film, In Other News, by company sound and video artist Kyle Thurow. Five Studio One Company dancers—Audrey Henk, Lauren Jungen, Ella Mathison, Ava Reitzner and Lauryn Schubert—joined Callies, Ragen and Ketter. Shown in jump cuts, they tore up newspapers, pushed them into the camera’s face, and danced in torment or despair in a rain of ripped up news. We knew this was a different kind of show.

At film’s end, the seven dancers entered live, wearing suits and carrying briefcases, to close the sequence with an image of corporate culture in Tomaszewski’s Turn Off the Lights. The suitcases proved to be empty. The dancing was packed. 

Please Seek Shelter

The main show’s nine dances and two films followed, performed by Three Point Project’s main company, apprentices, and guests. The opener, a structured improvisation titled Please Seek Shelter, felt very personal. That feeling lasted. Every dance was thrilling. The finale was hopeful; and rightly so, given the roots that drive the company’s work.

Tomaszewski told me that the title Glad It’s Raining was inspired during the filming of Nowadays, choreographed with the company by Dani Burd from Los Angeles at a lakeshore while beset by a sudden downpour of rain. “Rain can mean dark times,” Tomaszewski said, “but also rainbows. The times you didn’t understand why things were happening in the world, there’s got to be a light. And if there’s not, then we can be the light. That’s what this show is.”