Neck to Neck in ‘Genesis,’ Milwaukee Ballet’s Choreographic Competition

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Photo: Milwaukee Ballet milwaukeeballet.org

Milwaukee Ballet - 'Genesis'

Milwaukee Ballet - 'Genesis'

I’m glad I’m not a judge for this year’s “Genesis,” the choreographic contest Milwaukee Ballet has been holding every other year for two decades. The winner’s prize, along with cash, is the opportunity to return next year to choreograph a second world premiere for the company. I’d love to see another work by each of this year’s three competitors. There’s also an “Audience Choice” award. I didn’t cast a vote. It’s a three-way tie in my mind.

The official judges this year are the trustworthy artistic directors of the National Ballet of Canada, Pittsburg Ballet and Ballet Met of Columbus, Ohio. We’ll learn their decision when the run ends on Sunday, Feb. 13. Performances resume on Thursday, Feb. 10, at the company’s Third Ward home, the Baumgartner Center for Dance, where every seat is spitting distance from the dancers. Such closeness is a treasure. Even Jason Fassl’s lighting and Mary Piering’s costumes benefit.

“Genesis” has always been a worldwide competition but this year, because of the pandemic, only choreographers living in America could enter. From 83 submissions, artistic director Michael Pink deemed these the best: Nadine Barton of Charlotte Ballet, DaYoung Jung of Oklahoma City Ballet, and Price Suddarth of Pacific National Ballet in Seattle. In a preshow video, each shared helpful thoughts about their work.

Then the room darkened, recorded music on the excellent sound system filled the air and the show was underway. The works were performed without intermission. The order of presentation changes nightly to keep the contest fair, since the sequence has an impact like the build of a three-act play. Each work has a cast of four women and four men, chosen by lot, and was created with them over three weeks. Each runs less than 30 minutes.

Vignettes

Jung’s Vignettes has eight breathtaking vignettes with ever-changing combinations of dancers. The women wear pointe shoes, as Jung explained in the video, because they add additional movement possibilities, and movement possibilities for these dancers’ bodies is what she’s exploring. It’s virtuoso stuff but not traditional; fast and constantly changing. Individual skills are dished up. Fast, extreme, impossible-looking movements zip past. It’s all wit, drama and beauty set to gorgeous music for strings and piano, much of it by contemporary Spanish composer ANBR.

Suddarth’s Aftermath is set to the world premiere of piano music by Alfonso Peduto, at least as gorgeous. In the video, Suddarth said he’d been thinking of making this piece since the terrorist suicide bombings at the airport in Brussels in 2016 killed so many. “How do we redefine ourselves as we emerge from trauma?” he asked himself. “How do we use this very hard time to boost our art form and keep it fresh for the next 150 years?”

Thus, the internal actions of the dancers, the psychological underpinnings of their movements, matter. From the opening solo by Barry Molina, struggling with questions, to the shifting, introspective, sad, aware or determined moves in several duets by Annia Hidalgo with Molina and Randy Crespo, I was gently but powerfully drawn into what seemed in the end a heroic creative act.

Don’t Look Up?

Barton’s highly theatrical piece, Not As We Expected, dramatizes nothing less than the end of the world. The similarities between her story and the current film Don’t Look Up were a bit distracting at first. In both, NASA tries and fails to stop a major asteroid from demolishing Earth. The difference is that Barton’s dance, while sometimes funny, isn’t a comedy. It starts with a wedding and ends with, well …

Barton’s movements are unique and often brilliantly expressive. Well-costumed dancers play characters representing a cross-section of city life. Each portrait is vivid. Each journey is distinct. They gather to celebrate, and then conjoin in hope and terror as alarms sound and news updates in voice-overs diminish their chance of survival.

As in the film, the climate crisis is the underlying subject. “This is the moment that people need to speak up,” Barton said in the video, “and express themselves in any way they can, especially in the arts.”