Photo via Milwaukee Ballet
Swan Lake
It’s Michael Pink’s 20th season as Milwaukee Ballet’s artistic director. No one has served the company longer. To celebrate his two decades of virtuosic ballet storytelling, four of his made-in-Milwaukee ballets—Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Peter Pan—will be staged at the Marcus Center.
“Some might say there’s too much Pink,” Pink worries as we talk at the Baumgartner Center for Dance, the company’s exemplary home, built through his efforts. So he proffers a practical reason. “We own these ballets. As we’re making this slow recovery from COVID, it will save on costs.”
Swan Lake runs Nov. 3-6, followed by The Nutcracker in December. “We’re going to start by really showcasing our entire company,” Pink continues, “particularly in the way we dance the stories. The Tchaikovsky music is filled with opportunities for dancers, and the orchestra will be with us for both shows.”
Randy Crespo danced the lead role of Prince Siegfried in the company’s last production of Swan Lake in 2017 and will do so again. Born and raised in Cuba, Crespo entered the Cuban National Ballet School at age nine, joined the National Ballet of Cuba in 2009, and came to America in 2013, first to the Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami, then Ballet Arizona in Phoenix, and Milwaukee Ballet in 2016.
“He could dance anywhere,” Pink says. “He’s a good partner, middle height, hard-working. But he chooses to stay. He grew up in true ballet tradition and is now doing work that’s more humanized.”
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Mean What You Dance
Crespo tells it this way: “Michael always says ‘don’t do anything if your character doesn’t mean it.’ In Cuba, it was more oriented towards technique. Here it’s freer. It’s about the way you interpret your character. If you don’t put feeling into it, it’s not art, it’s just a step. Michael really helped me to grow as an artist.
“And most people who watch ballet don’t really know about the technical stuff,” he continues. “When they like somebody’s dancing, it’s about the way the dancer brings experiences from their own life to the characters. We don’t use words, but the audience can feel what we’re projecting. They don’t even care about the steps. They’re like, did you see her face!”
In traditional Swan Lake productions, a star ballerina plays Princess Odette, cursed for murky reasons—along with her female entourage—by the evil sorcerer Von Rothbart, to live the daylight hours as a swan. The same ballerina plays the Black Swan, Odette’s double, magically conjured by Von Rothbart to seduce Siegfried and destroy Odette, his sworn beloved. It’s something to do with good versus evil.
Pink makes clear that it’s part of a long master plan by Von Rothbart to seize the throne. In his production, the White and Black Swans are played by separate dancers. The Black Swan is Von Rothbart’s collaborator in a plot to shatter the Prince, depose the Queen mother and rule as dictator.
As Pink tells it, “In my production, we see Odette and her women friends captured by Von Rothbart’s magic. By day they will be swans around the lake, but when twilight falls they’ll morph back to being women. It’s the Prince, however, that Von Rothbart is after, not the women.”
Swan to Woman
He continues, “The transition from swan to woman leaves animalistic, swan-like traits in their bodies and arms, and they’re bedraggled. That’s the way Swan Lake is meant to be, but you never see that in other productions because the women are always in beautiful pristine tutus. Our costumes humanize them. You see them as a group of terrified women under this terrible curse. Like a flock of birds, they’re frightened by things, so they gather together and that’s what creates the choreography.
“In traditional productions,” he adds, “the ladies do all the work and the Prince stands around looking princely. That’s quite the opposite in this production. Our prince dances all the time, and the two major ladies share the stage with him at different times.”
I ask Crespo how he sees the Prince. “In traditional productions, you only see Odette as a woman. In Michael’s version, you see the in-between stage: is she a swan or a woman? That’s what the Prince finds so intriguing. At least, that’s the story I’m making in my head when I’m doing it. Then I sacrifice myself for love. When Von Rothbart kills her, I lift her and walk into the water and drown.”
Pink adds the spoiler: “It’s then when the lake and the birds swell up and engulf Von Rothbart like a tsunami of passion. And I think the ending tableau is one of our lighting designer David Grill’s proudest moments, the way he’s painted this incredible picture of hero and heroine floating off to paradise.”
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Performances are Nov. 3-6. Visit milwaukeeballet.org, call the company at 414-902-2103 or Marcus Performing Arts Center at 414-273-7206.
