Photo by Nathaniel Davauer
Marize Fumero and Randy Crespo - Milwaukee Ballet
Marize Fumero and Randy Crespo rehearse 'Carmen' in the studio for Milwaukee Ballet (2025)
Milwaukee Ballet closes its season May 16-18 with the U.S. premiere of choreographer Mark Godden’s Carmen, and the world premiere of In the Dark by Tsai Hsi Hung, winner of the company’s “Genesis International Choreographic Competition 2024.”
Godden is a Canadian American born in Texas, raised in the U.S., schooled in dance in Winnipeg, and currently living with his wife and children in Montreal. He created his Carmen, a 90-minute take on Georges Bizet’s opera masterpiece, in Guadalajara, Mexico in 2018 with a young company whose artistic director had hired him over the years to create works for the National Dance Company in Mexico City.
He has good Milwaukee history. Our ballet had him stage his Angels in the Architecture in 2001. Over the next 15 years, Artistic Director Michael Pink had him set his Miroirs, his Magic Flute, and a new staging of his Angels on the company.
Carmen was born as a ballet in Russia in the mid-20th century. The star was Bolshoi Ballet ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, who asked her composer husband Rodion Shchedrin to make her a score based on Bizet’s music, sans vocalists.
Strong Rhythmic Element
Godden’s Carmen uses Shchedrin’s score. “It’s all strings and a mass of percussion,” he tells me. “It’s masterful what he did to get a strong rhythmic element.”
He calls the opera’s story, based on an early 19th century novella, somewhat anachronistic in its view of men, women and Gypsies. “A lot of people now look for treatises on feminism with Carmen. I wasn’t really looking for that. For me, the conflict arises out of three people. There’s Don José, who’s very one-directional in his anger and obsession. There’s his fiancé Michaela who loves him. But Don José loves Carmen, a Gypsy who is many women—a factory worker, a seductive manipulator, a thief, but also vulnerable and loving. I think that’s what trips up Don José, because she shows genuine passion and desire for him. But she’s the same with the next guy. As much as she loves you now, in two minutes she’ll love someone else, and then it’s like ‘don’t bother me.’ Some people say that she betrays him, but she always warns him, this is who I am.”
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He suggests we read the synopsis printed in the program. “It’s a ballet, so there’s not much backstory. You’ll understand who Carmen is by watching what she does onstage. I ask the audience to be on the other side of the bridge pretty quickly, because we have to get to the good stuff, and there’s a lot of that. The first thing you’ll see is the fiancé’ Michaela waiting for a rendezvous with Don José. He runs on with a bloody knife and asks her to hide it.”
International Talent
He says about his new production, “There were lots of things I wanted to do in Mexico but couldn’t. Then, walking in the studio here and having real international talent—the leads here are incredible—the way everyone works, the generosity of their spirit, their experience, their abilities! The ballet is really different this time.”
Hung’s In the Dark, a 20-minute piece for 10 dancers, will open the program. The music is by contemporary Chinese composer Liu Zhu-Chi who composed her winning Genesis piece, The Living Quality. Her new dance shares its title with that of her new painting, inspired by 19th century poet Charles Baudelaire’s “The Death of Paupers” from his book of poems titled Flowers of Evil.
The poem deems death a consolation for the poor, something to be cherished. Hung’s wildly expressionist painting shows a fierce face smashed under every sort of color on a black background.
After her Genesis triumph, she returned to her Taiwan hometown, Taiping, to make dances for the University students there, then back to the U.S. to work at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York, then a contemporary dance company in Indianapolis.
“I really love ballet,” she tells me. “But I usually work with contemporary companies, I don’t know why.”
She says Milwaukee Ballet gives her time to think. “I’m trying pointe shoes this time. The movement is very different from contemporary. I can give the dancers an image, but we have to see if pointe shoes work for that.”
“In my insides, there’s so much going on,” she continues. “I don’t know how to say it, even in Chinese. But I can paint it. After that, I realize that’s what I want. I turn it to the dancers. It like becomes 3D. I like that they have individual personalities. Every dancer has a different kind of feeling. I give everybody different material. I can put it together like a painting with different colors.”
“This piece is kind of like the energy in the dark,” she finishes. “It’s like your life beginning.”
Performances are at the Pabst Theatre, 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, May 16-17; and 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, May 17-18. For tickets or information, visit milwaukeeballet.org or call the box office at 414-902-2103.
