Nö Studios Dance Fest 2026

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Photo Courtesy of Water Street Dance Milwaukee

Nō Studios Dance Fest (2025)

National acclaim and performance opportunities continue to grow for artistic director Morgan Williams and his Water Street Dance MKE, the professional dance company he founded in Milwaukee in 2019 and carries on in Cedarburg. I’m a longtime fan of his breakneck, highly acrobatic, deeply heartfelt work. 

Williams also serves as program director for the annual Nö Studios Dance Fest. This important, one-of-a-kind Midwest dance showcase was born in a little theatre in Milwaukee’s Brewery District in 2018. By 2024, it had grown to the point at which it could thrill the crowds at the Marcus Performing Arts Center’s outdoor stage. And on Saturday, October 23, it will, for the first time, fill the outdoor stage of the Peck Pavilion and the indoor stage of the Wilson Theatre in Vogel Hall. 

It’s the Fest’s biggest, most diverse, most stylistically varied show ever, thanks to Williams’ knowledge and skills as programmer, and to the continuing generosity of founding directors John Ridley and Lisa Ridley Carsar.  

Water Street Dance MKE’s contribution this year is a world premiere by Williams, set to a string of classic American Songbook standards sung by the “Italian Stallion” Dean Martin.  

“It features three male artists in my dance company who are beautiful,” he tells me. “One is Black, one is Hispanic, and one is white. They can be highly athletic and do everything I’m asking them to do, on top of having a beautiful technique. It’s fun. It’s theatrical for sure. I joke with my company that we should change our name to the Water Street Dance Theatre.” 

Art and Feeling 

The aim of his choreography, as always, he says, “is making sure that people who don’t understand dance will understand the art, the feeling. I want them to walk away with something. This is my way of doing something that can be entertaining while still keeping my artistic integrity.” 

The Fest starts outdoors at 3 p.m. with a program by DJ Shawna, the popular Milwaukee Bucks’ DJ. She’s followed at 3:30 by Milwaukee Rap Artist Daniel Harris and his band.  

Next, Williams says, is a “Dance Community Dance Battle, where you have a DJ and a hip hop dance crew, and they’ll get onstage and battle it out. There’s no winner. It’s more about fun and comradery.” 

The Preshow at the Peck Stage begins at 5 p.m. with signature works by an unprecedented number of dance companies: Aden Hurst and Collaborators from Chicago performing “Forever Never”; Alisha Jihn, a Taiwanese-American visiting dance professor at UWM with her “hybridized folkdance”; Creative Dance Studio of Oak Creek doing “the Mime”; the Chicago-based Chibuck Movement doing Krump street dance; Danceworks Performance MKE with “Intimidation Tactics” by the great Christal Wagner and  company dancers; the Chicago/Midwest Rivet Dance Company performing “Followers”; Salsabrositas MKE, Milwaukee’s outstanding young Latin Dance company; Studio K Flamenco, the premiere exponent of Flamenco in the Midwest; the contemporary jazz dance of The Launch Chicago; Milwaukee’s characteristically ferocious Three Point Project with “Before We Have No More” the faith-based contemporary dance of Signature Dance Company; the mysterious Chicago Dance Playhouse; and the thrilling, Sheboygan-based ariel dance company Warped. 

Midway through that Preshow, at around 5:45 p.m., dance artist Frank Gatson will take the stage for a conversation about dance with Danni Gee, programming director for the Joyce Theatre, New York City’s home for international contemporary dance.

Conversations on Dance 

“Nö Studios is doing a lot of podcasts,” Williams explains, “and they’ve been having me do the interviews. I just interviewed Frank. He’s a Milwaukee native. He danced for Michael Jackson, he’s choreographed for Beyonce, and for En Vogue, and most recently for Brandy. He’s the creative director for her tour. And we’re honoring him at the Fest with a Legacy Award.” 

The Preshow resumes about 6:15 p.m., and the Main Show in the Wilson Theatre is scheduled for 7:30. Each performing company is state of the art: Chicago Dance Crash; Milwaukee-based Dawn Springer Dance Projects; Detroit House of Jit; Chicago-based Nia Davis, Milwaukee Irish Dance Company, Waukesha-based Nova Linea Contemporary Dance, Visceral Dance Chicag, and Water Street Dance Milwaukee. 

I asked Williams about Nia Davis. “She’s an independent choreographer from Chicago and a really good friend of mine. Her choreography is stunning. She’s a Black girl. She did Nö Dance Fest two years age. We both danced with Visceral Dance that year. We did a duet. She came back last year and performed with Visceral. Now this year she’s performing with Visceral and showcasing a work of her own. 

“The crazy part,” he adds, “is that on the morning of the Fest my company will be coming in town from a tour in Iowa. I’m doing the driving. People should know the grind doesn’t stop. You have to believe in yourself. But I’d do it all again. I just would probably be nicer to myself in the process.” 

The Fest is Saturday, October 3, from 3 p.m. onward at Milwaukee’s Marcus Performing Arts Center, 929 N. Water Street. For more information, visit nostudios.com > dance-fest