Photo credit: Timothy O'Donnell
Michael Pink
You tell me what’s happening in dance here. If you open up the idea—it’s not just ballet and what’s going on with Danceworks. It’s Ko-Thi and all the other groups. What’s our folk scene like—the big Holiday Folk Fair with so many cultural dances? It’s incredible. It’s unbelievable, the amount of people.
Marcia Parsons at UW-Milwaukee used to talk about recruiting boys to UWM’s Dance Department from the Serbo-Croatian dance troupe which had, like, 50 kids. It’s a big community. And salsa dance. There’s one salsa club that our Cuban dancers at the Milwaukee Ballet adore. And ballroom dance. What about the increase in people going to the Fred Astaire Studio? I think it’s time to recognize again the wealth of culture that is Milwaukee.
Michael Pink began his artistic directorship of Milwaukee Ballet in 2002. He’s the company’s longest-serving artistic director. Pink trained as a classical dancer at Great Britain’s Royal Ballet School and danced with English National Ballet from 1975-’85. He was the founding director of Ballet Central in London and associate artistic director of Northern Ballet. His own ballets are performed internationally.
