Souls of Women in Ballet

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Photo by Rachel Malehorn

Annia Hidalgo in ‘Sylph’

Annia Hidalgo in ‘Sylph’

A sylph is a mythological creature of air, mortal but soulless, as light as air and with a range from gentle breeze to hurricane. Woman ballet dancers are traditionally pushed to embody that image. What then is a woman dancer standing stock still onstage, flat footed in stockings; an adult woman, mind you, who’s given her life, full force, to the art? Does her soul matter?

That’s a question choreographer Dawn Springer and a seasoned cast of adult women ballet dancers have asked themselves for over a year in the creation of Sylph, a contemporary ballet premiering October 11-12 at the Jan Serr Studio high up in UWM’s Kenilworth Building with its grand view of the city below.

Springer has taught and choreographed for UWM’s Peck School of the Arts Dance Department for over 10 years. She works with many dance companies. Last May, for example, she revived her touching 2009 solo Try, Try Again for Wild Space Dance Company’s site-specific Skip Stitch concert in an abandoned Walker’s Point knitting factory.

Springer named her own company the Dawn Springer Dance Project because “I want it to change and mold to whatever we’re doing in the moment,” she tells me at a Sylph rehearsal. She describes her working method this way: “When I feel fear, that’s the choice I make. Go with the fear.” I’ve found her work unique and forthright.

Impossibility of Perfection?

She’s teaches contemporary styles for Milwaukee Ballet’s Second Company and its Pre-professional Division. Regarding the latter, she tells this story: “The first time I walked into the school and saw through the window the high school students I was going to teach, I started weeping. I felt empathy for them facing the demand for excellence and the drive for the impossibility of perfection. How do we find our humanity in that, both in the doing and in the watching? That’s what Sylph is about.”

The audience will surround the dancers onstage. “Part of it is our desire to be close to the audience,” Springer explains. “Part of it has to do with disrupting the dynamic of merely consuming; it’s maybe being watched while watching. It’s seeing how we relate not just to dancers in performance, but also to women. It’s also about how dancers let themselves be seen, and the tension between the image of a dancer and the fact that we are human beings responding to gravity and weight; and what does that mean, literally and figuratively?”

Her cast of five collaborators includes three former Milwaukee Ballet dancers: Janel Meindersee, Annia Hidalgo, and Itzel Hernandez.  Meindersee left Milwaukee Ballet in 2018 for UW-Madison where she earned her BA and MA in Human Ecology with an emphasis on Community Health and Partnership Building. She’s continued to dance freelance, including with Springer. A year ago, she had a baby.

 “This is my first production as a new mom,” she says. “It’s a lot harder now that I’m taking care of a little one. I also have another 20-hour a week job. It’s a busy life, but I’m so grateful that dance continues to be a part of it because it’s such an essential part of who I am.”

Starting Again

Hidalgo, a Milwaukee Ballet Leading Artist, retired in 2023.  “I’m a freelancer now,” she jokes. “For 12 years I already had done all the principle roles at the Ballet. I was ready to explore.” That’s led to a celebrated project in New York with Queer the Dance, shows in Michigan, teaching in Wisconsin summer camps, and Sylph. 

“I thought that dance was over for me in Milwaukee,” she says, “and honesty, I have a lot to give. Dawn found the space for me to start again. It’s a process of healing, of growth, and of establishing for me that this is possible in Milwaukee. We need this.”

Hernandez left the Ballet last April. She’s a psychology major at UWM now and teaches dance at Northshore Dance Studio, Blue Rose Dance Studio, Burlington Dance Academy, and Core El Centro, the invaluable wellness center for Latino/a families and children in need.

“I teach little ballerinas from 3 to 10 years old,” she says. “It’s a wholesome experience being part of the community again and modeling the leader that I would want to follow.” 

“When we think of ballerinas, we think of pointe shoes and tutus,” she continues.” With Sylph, we’re trying to break away from that. We dehumanize ourselves when we’re caught in that rigor of ‘we have to be perfect all the time.’ Perfection is unattainable and not unsustainable. I started dancing at four years old. It was always ‘you have to have the perfect body, the perfect look.’ We should accept dancers no matter who they are or what they look like.”

Venezuela’s Sejain Bastidas and Milwaukee’s Natalie Dellutri complete the cast.

Performances are Oct. 11 @ 7:30 p.m. and Oct. 12 @ 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Jan Serr Studio Kenilworth Square East, 2155 N. Prospect Ave. For tickets, visit sylph.brownpapertickets.com  The show runs about an hour.