But there’s something else unusual about these events. Zahradnicek’s “Love in a Time of War” started as a poem by Chad Piechocki, which was set into a soundscape by composer Seth Warren-Crow and then choreographed into a dance performance by Zahradnicek, a Milwaukee Ballet company member. The see-and-be-seen MAM crowd isn’t just looking at paintings but also watching can-can and burlesque dancing, sampling French food and wine, and creating tchotchkes at DIY craft tables. And Vanier’s “Somatophobia” is a technology wonderfest complete with projection screens, iPads, body-mounted motion sensors and a 10-foot-high samurai “robot.” Swan Lake it is not.
Welcome to the Milwaukee arts scene, 2012-13 edition.
The eclectic, genre-bending events of that summer evening will be repeated again and again over the course of the coming season. Sure, there are ballets, art shows, concerts and plays. But there is also an increasing number of “events” that defy traditional categories and boundaries. It’s a season where collaboration will create some of the most interesting and unusual art the city has seen in some time.
Collaboration, of course, happens all the time. Designers create theater settings for ballets and operas; composers create music to move a play from scene to scene;
actors and directors rely on each other to hone a dramatic moment. But artistic associations between different
kinds of artists have become more common and unorthodox. It’s not a surprising development as the arts struggle for attention in an era with an exploding number of what marketing pros call “leisure-time options.”
Last season’s production of “tango opera” Maria de Buenos Aires brought three groups together (Danceworks Performance Company, Milwaukee Opera Theatre and the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra) as well as three core audiences. “We squeezed people in but still had to turn some away,” says Dani Kuepper, artistic director of Danceworks. “It was thrilling.”
Although it’s wonderful to fill a space, artists aren’t solely concerned with audiences. If they were, they’d produce reality television or made-for-YouTube cat videos. Rather, they want challenges. They want to grow. They want to create something fresh that engages the community and speaks about the world. And for many, collaboration offers opportunities to step outside comfort zones.
Creative collaboration, Alverno Presents’ David Ravel says, is not a brand-spanking-new phenomenon. But there’s clearly an interest in stretching out and looking beyond traditional limits. And that’s good for artists and audiences, and for Ravel, too: “It’s an interesting way for everybody to avoid taking the work for granted,” he says. “We think we know what a concert is like, what a dance show is like. We know what to expect when we go to a play. So we might not be fully present to the work.
“An unusual combination,” Ravel continues, “makes the experience fresh for the audience and gets them to reconsider all the stuff we think we know.”
This arts season will feature several collaborations among artists, performers and organizations. Some are unusual first-time alliances, some are created by groups where unique and unusual partnerships are standard operating procedure. And some simply bring a number of talented artists to the same creative task. Their origins are as different as the projects themselves. And they should add up to an interesting and rewarding season.
FAÇADE
Diagram the various short- and long-term relationships involving area arts orgs, and the arrows will eventually lead to Milwaukee Opera Theatre’s Jill Anna Ponasik and Danceworks’ Dani Kuepper. Instrumental in producing last season’s extraordinarily memorable Maria de Buenos Aires, the two worked with UW-Milwaukee dance professor Simone Ferro and Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra director Richard Hynson to bring dancers, actors, musicians, singers and designers together for a single event – the “tango opera” by Argentine composer Ástor Piazzolla.
“It was such a successful collaboration,” Kuepper says. “Each organization contributed independently and uniquely. It was something we each couldn’t have done alone.”
Kuepper became artistic director of Danceworks Performance Company in 2007, and since then, the group’s work and influence has spread through the community with collaborations, education programs like Mad Hot Ballroom and Tap, and a stronger overall vision of Danceworks as a collective of dancer-choreographers.
In 2008, Ponasik took on the role of Milwaukee Opera Theatre’s artistic director and quickly transformed the organization from a respectable producer of small-scale traditional opera into one of the most innovative companies in Milwaukee. In the last year alone, MOT has commissioned new operas, created ingenious versions of classics like Amahl and the Night Visitors and Iolanthe, and staged cleverly themed song recitals like this season’s Guns n’ Rosenkavalier, a seemingly unholy alliance of heavy metal and classical song.
“We’re definitely going through a period of reinvention,” Ponasik says, “actively redefining what we do and looking for what people in the community need. They might say, ‘I want to write a full-length piece, but I don’t know what that is.’ Well, maybe we can have a few breakfasts and find out. Do you want to write a superhero opera? OK, we can help with that.”
For Kuepper, collaboration is about “the unexpected,” the necessity to deal with the unfamiliar. “It’s satisfying to plan a season and know that the dancers are going to be challenged in different ways. That’s what collaborative projects do.”
And they’re at it again.
Building on the success of Maria, the two will again work with Richard Hynson on a music-dance-theater piece. But the similarities end there. Composer William Walton’s Façade – an “entertainment” he created in the 1920s along with poet Edith Sitwell – is a suite of nonsense poems read with instrumental accompaniment. There are several published versions of the score and poems, and part of the challenge (and creative fun) will be shaping the elements into an evening that includes dance, music and theater.
It will certainly bring a variety of Milwaukee performers together to create something unique, and Ponasik and Kuepper are happy to be the creative glue to hold it together. “We can hunt for opportunities for people to do what they do,” Ponasik says. “And if we can provide those, we’ll have a robust artistic community in Milwaukee, and it will make the city a better place.”
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What’s So Funny? Photo by Dan Bishop.
WHAT’S SO FUNNY?
Need further proof that Dani Kuepper is driving her Danceworks company to take risks? Take Exhibit B: What’s So Funny?, a collaboration between a modern dance company and an improv and sketch comedy troupe, The Show.
Before you picture a “Saturday Night Live” parody with John Belushi in a purple body suit, remember that here, dancers and comedians work together. In other words, no cheap shots.
Now, cut to a small Danceworks studio workshop with children’s art projects pasted on the walls. Around the table are Kuepper and Danceworks Associate Artistic Director Kim Johnson-Rockafellow along with actor-comedians Karen Estrada, Matt Huebsch, Doug Jarecki, Andrea Moser and Jason Powell. Conversation ensues.
KUEPPER: Andrea and I were talking once about how much fun it would be to work together. So we said, “Let’s do it.”
HUEBSCH: The Show performed in 2007 and 2008, but went dormant while some of us got married and had kids. We were ready to do this show, but then you got knocked up, and I got knocked up and…
KUEPPER: The planning we’ve done so far basically asks, “What’s so funny about dance?” We’re looking at things that are physical, like a parody of a Greek drama.
JOHNSON-ROCKAFELLOW: We’re all learning new things here. I’m excited to work with actors and find out how to embody a character, to embody “funny.”
JARECKI: When you do improv, you have to respect the source material. You embrace it. We don’t want to make fun of it or intentionally cheapen it. And there’s no point in collaborating if you’re not going to jump into the other world and do the best you can.
KUEPPER: I like the idea of different kinds of “movers” in the same piece. I once did a piece with a hip-hop dancer, Milwaukee Ballet dancers and some high school girls. I simply said, “Everyone do something with your right arm. Everyone do something with your left toe.” It was the same but different. The physical people could be physical, and the theatrical people could be theatrical.
ESTRADA: I’m interested in pratfalls. They are a giant comedic tradition. Could we make an entire choreographed dance of pratfalls and near-misses?
POWELL: I have some musical sketches and would love some choreography added to the songs.
MOSER: (With genuine enthusiasm.) I want to be the Black Swan! Sometimes, you just have to throw out an idea and see where your mind goes. Sometimes, “This is kind of lame, but what do you think of this?” can turn into something fantastic.
JARECKI: It’s not an easy process. You can’t help being frustrated when you write something and it gets twisted around and warped. It’s tough to put that ego aside. But it usually ends up better. I once wrote a Phantom of the Opera parody that Jason took and made infinitely better.
ESTRADA: That’s what’s nice about working with smart people who know where a piece needs to go. If you start with a comfort level of trust and respect, you can’t do badly.
THEATRE GIGANTE
For some, a hybrid collaboration is a unique occasion, a once-in-a-lifetime chance for, say, a dancer and an actor to create something uncommon. But for Mark Anderson and Isabelle Kralj, the artistic couple behind Theatre Gigante, hybrid performances are a way of life.
The merging of genres is clear from Gigante’s old name, Milwaukee Dance Theatre. It’s also clear in its distinctive body of work as well as the artists who make up the company.
Gigante’s blend of movement and words reflect Anderson and Kralj’s history. He trained as a theater artist and was drawn to experimental work in the 1970s, including varieties of solo performance made famous by Spaulding Gray. She grew up in Milwaukee with Slovenian roots, the daughter of actors who often worked in radio, but her passion was dance. She founded the company in 1987, and when Anderson joined as co-artistic director in 1999, the signature Gigante style emerged. Together, their artistic personalities reflect an interest in sound and movement, storytelling and abstraction.
“When we met, we were from opposite worlds,” Kralj says. “But we clicked immediately because we had the same hybrid aesthetic. We don’t have a hard time thinking this way.”
Part of that aesthetic is the thrill of the shift in style. Moving between realistic acting and stylized movement or dance is a “roller coaster,” Kralj says. “It’s visceral, and it captures the way the mind works – the mix of emotions. The audience is taken for a ride rather than just taking it all in intellectually.”
For its 25th anniversary season, Gigante will feature a new monologue by Anderson (his first in 17 years), a traditional, scripted play by Hungarian Gyorgy Spiro, and the company’s dance-theater take on the Greek story of Electra.
As with many of Gigante’s works, choosing Electra is personal. Two years ago, the company dealt with the issue of aging parents with a stunning interpretation of King Lear. Now, having lost their parents, Kralj and Anderson are ready to take on that universal theme of growing up and leaving one’s mother. They’ll draw on their experiences, their collaborators, art that inspired them and, of course, that artistic tension.
“Left to our own devices we would work very differently,” Anderson says. “We’re not like two butterflies floating perfectly in harmony. Gigante forces us to work that out.”
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Among the mortality collaborators (left to right): Molly Shanahan, Jon Mueller and Dylan Schleicher.
Photo by Kat Schleicher
DEATH BLUES
Percussionist Jon Mueller’s career has been full of change and innovation. Running record label Crouton Records for 10 years. Taking a leading role in trailblazing band Collections of Colonies of Bees. Playing in Volcano Choir, a collaboration with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. And having stints with Table of the Elements and Pele.
There are a lot of band names and entrances and exits, but Mueller has been called one of the most powerful and provocative drummers working today.
His latest musical project, Death Blues, is unique in its own way. “It’s my take on folk music, but in a very hard way,” he says from his Third Ward studio. “Acoustic, traditional instruments. Vocals, but no lyrics.”
When the music was more or less “in the can,” he says, questions arose: “What else do I do with this? Could this music exist in a place other than the usual ‘go to the bar, watch the band, go home’?”
That’s when he had the “crazy” idea that dance would be “involved somehow.” Not the kind of dance that goes with blues at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night. But dance as in choreography. Modern dance. “And I know nothing about dance,” he says, “which is one reason why I was interested in it.”
Alverno Presents’ David Ravel knows something about dance, so Mueller called him to talk. After what Mueller terms a “deep conversation,” Death Blues began its transformation into a performance event that would not only include dance but also a whole range of artistic forms and elements.
It’s a natural extension, Mueller says, of his musical journey. “Personally, I was starting to want more meaning in what I do – to try to have a greater connection with people and make more of an impact.”
There’s a lot of meaning in mortality. In essence, that’s what Death Blues is about. It “addresses the inevitability of death as impetus to become more present in each moment,” to quote the Tumblr page that charts the work in progress. For Mueller, that central question is a catalyst for the other artists who have signed on. It’s a common ground, an idea that provokes questions and conversations. And creativity.
Death Blues has consumed Mueller for more than a year, and that basic question has kept him going. “I usually work on something for a year,” he explains. “You bring a record out, you play some shows around it, then you start thinking about the next thing. But I don’t feel burned out or boxed in by this at all. I’m not just flexing artistic muscle either. This is something I can do to be more helpful and meaningful to whoever is there to listen.”
PRESENT MUSIC
He doesn’t look it, but Present Music’s Kevin Stalheim might be Milwaukee’s Grand Old Man of collaboration. As the artistic director of one of the nation’s premiere ensembles dedicated to contemporary art music, Stalheim knows the group didn’t reach its fourth decade by thinking narrowly.
“I naturally like variety,” he says sitting in the group’s office in the Broadway Theatre Center. “I like to make connections and bring different kinds of people together. It’s part of who I am.”
That was nurtured by some of Stalheim’s pre-PM music experiences, like his time with Pittsburgh-based American Wind Symphony, which spent summers performing on a barge that made stops along various rivers. “We sometimes played for 10,000 people along the shore,” he says. “And we’d mix up super-tough modernist pieces with Sousa marches.”
Stalheim brought that eclectic spirit to Present Music when he started it 30 years ago. “Raw, modern music without any connections or context is just not the best way to go,” he says. “It doesn’t work for me, and I’m an expert. So why would it work for people who don’t think about music all day long.”
So Stalheim programmed concerts that made connections. A jazz-inspired piece shares a bill with a jazz ensemble. Minimalist music inspired by African rhythms gets paired with a rapper or dub poet. As Stalheim puts it, “We were multicultural before multicultural was cool.”
In recent years, PM connections have expanded beyond mere musical styles. Concerts have spread out over the city into different venues – Turner Hall, the Milwaukee Art Museum, even the Milwaukee County Zoo. And they’ve become occasions to reach into the community, to dancers, actors, filmmakers and beyond.
“We did some strategic brainstorming three or four years ago,” says Eric Lind, PM’s managing director. “We decided that we had to market the experience.”
This season is no different.
For a concert called “FALL(ing),” PM will collaborate with the Milwaukee Ballet and UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Stalheim will choose a piece of music for four different choreographers, who will each create a dance. Later this season, PM will reach out to the broader community when it presents Judgment of Midas, a world premiere opera by a frequent collaborator, Turkish-American composer Kamran Ince. Based on a mythical song contest between Pan and Apollo depicted in ancient Turkish mosaics, the opera will team Present Music with Milwaukee Opera Theatre. And PM will also organize other events and presentations on themes related to the story, including archaeology, classical mythology, and Turkish culture and cuisine.
LA BOHEME
Of all the major arts companies in town, none have created more new work – staged more world premieres – than the Milwaukee Ballet under Michael Pink.
Pink has built a company that allows him to create new ballets with the help of dancers who are active participants in the process. It’s the only way Pink is able to stage a steady stream of new story ballets as well as reimagined classics, from Peter Pan to Dracula to this season’s world premiere ballet version of Puccini’s La Boheme.
Creating work like this in a normal rehearsal schedule requires dancers with particular talents and a particular relationship with the choreographer. Now in his 10th year with the ballet, Pink has developed a company at ease with his theatrical vision to tell stories in dance.
“I’m most comfortable working with a narrative, and I want dancers who can help find movement to convey that narrative,” he says. “Every moment on stage is important.”
Ballet is not just about waiting for your “bravura stand-and-deliver moment. The folks who stay here,” he says, “believe there is more to ballet than just the steps.”
This year, Pink adds to his roster of original ballets by crossing genres. To craft a ballet version of Puccini’s beloved opera, La Boheme, he’ll work with the ballet’s music director, Andrews Sill, to create a purely instrumental score. They’ll tell the story using movement rather than song.
For Pink and others on the Milwaukee scene, “It’s all about building strong relationships.”
