Joelle Worm
When I think of the current state of dance in Milwaukee, I can’t help but think of things that are no longer here and have left voids. For an independent modern/contemporary dance artist like me, a few of those things are these:
Alverno Presents was a vital link to the outside world, or at least some portion of it. Milwaukee has little in terms of outside influence for high-caliber, contemporary, new-genre works. There are much larger shows brought in by the Marcus Center, The Rep or even Sharon Lynne Wilson, but virtually nothing of the experimental—with the exception of what Polly Morris can mix in out at the Lynden Sculpture Garden.
While Dance Revolution MKE may have turned their efforts to Milwaukee Fringe, their MKE Follies series provided regular presenting opportunities in a variety of venues for Milwaukee’s independent and emerging dance people. While the Danceworks Get It Out There (GIOT) series may have borrowed its format from MKE Follies, it seems to be missing the culture of grit that that series provided with its changing venues, spare lighting options, etc. MKE Follies did not pretend to have sheen, but it had intimacy and rawness.
The Danceworks Art to Art series provided a middle ground between the ‘everyone’s in’ ethos of MKE Follies/GIOT and the fully produced seasons of Danceworks and Wild Space. It had an application process; it came with mandatory in-process critique and culminated in a fully produced evening. Danceworks certainly supports independents by providing affordable theater rental and rehearsal space, but it does not provide the artistic process support that was built into Art to Art. Those concerts may have been inconsistent, but they provided a stepping stone and conversation around the creation of work that is vital for artists.
Some new developments have cropped up that attempt to corral and convene some parts of the community. Milwaukee Dance Theater Network (MDTN) tries to gather artistic directors and independent dance and dance/theater artists to discuss needs and support the project ideas of its mostly white and upper-middle-class members. It has created a website that, in the very least, provides a single space to learn what else is out there in dance besides the Milwaukee Ballet, Danceworks and Wild Space. I am skeptical that MDTN has made much traction outside of its membership due to the volunteer nature of the organizers and the scarce resources that come from its members’ dues.
I helped bring The Field New York’s new work development process [Fieldwork] to Milwaukee; but again, the volunteer nature of administering the program makes it hard to sustain over time. Without a neutral home whose mission it is to support a multi-disciplinary and cross-institutional undertaking like Fieldwork, it sometimes feels too easy to not organize and lead a session.
When I turn my sights to the graduates churned out by UW-Milwaukee’s Dance Department, I become keenly aware of what our university-trained dancers are doing after graduation. Many of them still flee to the coasts—New York City and, more recently, Los Angeles due to the connections Maria Gillespie has provided. But others look to similar-size (but more robust) or slightly larger cities like Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago and Philadelphia. What this tells me (and I have felt this as a dancer moving here from a larger city), is that Milwaukee lacks opportunities to continue training and investigating a variety of dance practices beyond the university.
Finally, Milwaukee does not have enough dance criticism. There are reviews that describe what happened, but not much to help gauge quality or aesthetic difference. We usually know when a company does a better (or worse) job of being themselves, but for some reason, we’re not willing to put it in writing—maybe because we are so ‘Midwest nice?’ How are we even growing a next generation of dance writers?”
Milwaukee native Joelle Worm is an independent dance artist and educator at UW-Milwaukee, founder of The Field Milwaukee, performer with Maria Gillespie and the choreographic improvisation group HyperlocalMKE and with New York City’s choreographic improvisation company De Facto Dance. She spent nine years dancing with small companies in NYC and administering arts education programming in New York Public Schools. As a member of Cre8Mke, she works to restore arts curriculum to Milwaukee Public Schools. With Imagine MKE, she works to advance the city’s arts by helping artists survive economically, and she’s a founding member of Milwaukee Dance Theatre Network.
