Photo via Facebook / Wild Space Dance Company
The day was hot and humid, but a lake breeze and the evening shade behind the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Calatrava wing felt heavenly. MAM deserves much gratitude for offering free performances here this summer.
Every Thursday in August, Wild Space Dance Company is performing Flipside, a 40-minute world premiere painstakingly choreographed by Debra Loewen precisely for this site, performed there by her troupe to live accompaniment.
The sight lines are perfect. You can perch on the low wall that outlines the playing area or stretch out on the grass just above it. At the performance I attended on the second Thursday, some brought lawn chairs, some had wheelchairs.
Every passer-by on the sidewalk along the lake became part of the art event, whether walking, biking, roller skating or riding scooters. Crying gulls became additional accompaniment. From my viewing spot, the lake, dotted with sailboats, and the Calatrava’s “prow” were backdrops. The lake was still enough to be a painting. The Calatrava’s windows were huge picture frames.
Alive and Constantly Changing
Viewing Flipside was like much like viewing the artwork inside. But Flipside is alive and constantly changing, renewing itself, provoking further responses as it unfolds. The dance is abstract, strongly structured, rhythmic, composed of solos and group passages, compelling and meditative.
Loewen has created dances inside MAM in response to specific exhibitions. In a conversation after the performance, she mentioned Helen Frankenthaler’s bold abstract paintings as a partial inspiration for this one. MAM has four in the permanent collection.
You’ll have your own thoughts as you watch. I’ll just say that even when moving in unison, each dancer is strongly individual. Each carries a stick of chalk and makes simple drawings on the stone-tiled dance floor. These could be a home, or a frame. Blank paper plays a provocative role. More importantly, this dance is a gentle consideration of things we’ve faced since Covid-19 struck. There’s a search going on—looking, listening, sensing, around and inside—but you still have to act, to make decisions and choices. On one level, it’s about art making—the work at hand, in fact—but always as a metaphor for other interactions.
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Thanks to performers Katelyn Altmann, Tori Isaac, Jessica Lueck, Tisiphani Mayfield, Dan Schuchart, Andy Miller and Cory Coleman. As MAM’s Pedro Gutierrez said when I expressed my thanks to MAM for hosting is, “What better use of a great space than Wild Space?”
The remaining free performances are Aug. 19 and 26 at 6 p.m. on the Milwaukee Art Museum East Lawn.
