Musician, poet, historian and UW-Milwaukee Music Department faculty member Martin Jack Rosenblum died in his sleep in January 2014. Last weekend, six remarkable new dances were presented to honor him in Summerdances: Spirits and Fugitives by the UWM Dance Department. Choreographed by faculty members and alumni, and danced by supremely capable students, the contrasting performances addressed different facets of the man: among other things, a thoughtful seeker, a playful renegade and a rock ’n’ roll poet with deep blues roots.
Each dance also represented the unique artistry of its choreographer. Maria Gillespie’s “Rogue Fugue” considered the courage of outsider artists. To a sultry pastiche of Bessie Smith, Trixie Smith, Janis Joplin, Nina Simone and Patti Smith singing raw blues, a community of self-possessed women shared and traded energies in movements that seemed born from within. Grainy film close-ups of their ectoplasmic bodies appeared and faded like spirits behind them.
The Rolling Stones accompanied Elizabeth Johnson’s delicious “Just A Kiss Away,” the finest work I’ve seen from this generous punk choreographer who is leaving, alas, to teach in Texas. She gives her dancers reasons to be funny, rude, attractive and cuddly. Goofy social dance steps abound. The kids eat cheese balls, chew bubble gum, reassure themselves, affirm everything and, yes, kiss.
Sam Johnson’s somber “For” was inspired, I’ll guess, by Rosenblum’s sudden death. The pain-driven sound design by Jeff Wells suggests an effort to stop thought. Dancers often lie still, listen and wait, comfort or panic. “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,” they say quietly in one passage. There are images of seizure and very affecting images of the effort to make something from thin air—a worthy memorial: art.
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Unguarded dancers interviewed audience members on the meaning of “home” as Daniel Burkholder’s “Acts of Home” began. They turned our answers into movements that became part of the partly improvised piece, a meditation on home, community and the flight of Voyager 1 beyond our solar system. “The stars remembered what I should have said” by Dani Kuepper precisely captured the romanticism embodied by Rosenblum, the self-named Holy Ranger. Against Kym McDaniel’s film of stars, meteors, moon, lake and boundless skies, dancers sought and saw the ineffable.
The Holy Ranger’s songs accompanied the many moods and challenges of Sarah Weber Gallo’s exhilarating “Wisconsin October.
