Looking Ahead….
You know Charlot and I know Charlot, but did you know Charlie Chaplin was a composer as well as a genius writer, actor and director. He started with Vaudeville songs, but he also wrote the complete scores for his full-length films – Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Limelight and others. It all began with City Lights, arguably his greatest movie. The Milwaukee Symphony offers the rare chance to see a Chaplin film on the big screen this weekend. And to hear Chaplin’s lovely music performed in all its chamber symphonic splendor.
Because Karol Armitage is ever the hipster, I assume that the name of her company, Armitage Gone! Dance, is closer in spirit to “Gone, Daddy, Gone” than “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” It certainly fits her
sensibility – coming at dance from several different directions, including collaborations with Balanchine, Nureyev, Merce Cunningham, not to mention Madonna. In earlier days, Armitage was known for eclectic influences and crazy narratives (one of her works in the 1990s was about the Michael Milken financial scandals). But in recent years she’s moved toward a pure, muscular classicism. This concert will feature two works: “Ligetti Essays” (2007) and “Time is the echo of an axe within a wood” (2004). Photo of “Ligetti Essays” by Paul Kolnick.
Call it a kind of choral jukebox. The accomplished ensemble, Milwaukee Choral Artists, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a concert of their most requested pieces. The group has a dogged following, so the idea that someone would want to hear that “Palestrina number” from 1998 isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. Unlike other “request shows,” we don’t expect calls of “Freebird” to echo from the back rows. But you can count on some terrific music.
And if sublime isn’t really your thing this weekend, you can always slip into the gutter with Lisa Lampinelli, the so-dubbed Queen of Mean who makes Don Rickles look like Mr. Rogers. Lampinelli takes a break from the Comedy Central Roast circuit to play two shows at the Riverside. Better hope you’re not sitting in the front rows.
Looking Back…
Even though it’s set to the raucous Romanian gypsy music of Taraf de Haidouks, Nelly van Bommel’s new piece, “Gelem, Gelem,” isn’t afraid of silence or stillness. It’s become a convention (or cliché) of postmodern dance to let movement continue after the music has stopped. But here, these charged silences are hilariously dramatic. The piece starts with Rachel Malehorn frozen in dim light upstage center. After an uncomfortably long pause, she strides commandingly downstage, only to stand her ground again, glaring at us without affect. The first gesture of the dance is a quick ruffling of her peasant skirt. But by the time it happens, the suspense is almost hilariously intense.
It’s a perfect prelude to the music, which hits the air like a wagon rumbling through the Carpathians. And it also captures the spirit of the folk dance, which is both seductive and combative. Through the rest of the 30-minute piece, Van Bommel builds variations on the earthy gestures of gypsy movement. Sometimes she distills the spirit into a simple move – a flat-footed, heel-thumping plie. Other times she playfully tweaks it – a canon in which dancers pretend to grab each other’s noses. The piece has a compelling sense of architecture, gradually building its variations up to an all out gypsy hootenanny in the finale.
Van Bommel’s piece was the best of three premieres at the Milwaukee Ballet’s Pabst Theater concert last weekend. Petr Zahradnícek’s “Slip” was a close second. She usually works with her own company, NOA Dance, which is made up of dancers with varied training. Zahradnícek’s style, on the other hand, is pure ballet (he’s a member of the Milwaukee Ballet company), even though the dance is a gleeful tribute to The Mod that keeps itself just this side of camp (sometimes even boldly crossing over). Imagine the interludes in “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” danced by Suzanne Farrell instead of Goldi Hawn and you have some idea of the spirit.
Unlike “Gelem, Gelem,” “Slip” is restlessly kinetic. The music is funky ‘70s jazz by the African group Ethiopiques. Even the spaces between the dances are filled with swirling disco spotlights. There’s a healthy sprinkle of psychedelia (more in the vein of Our Man Flint than Easy Rider) and ample opportunities for the company to strut its stuff. As a member of the company, Zahradnícek knows the dancers well, and much of the joy in “Slip” is simply watching the dancers formidable technique. It also helped that the Pabst is a more intimate space – every sinew and flex seemed all the more clear and vivid.
By contrast, Jessica Lang’s “Beatus Vir” was static and sculptural. Its opening tableau, with dancers arrayed on a staircase, was something right out of Rodin’s “Gates of Hell.” But the piece didn’t build much on that striking image. Set to music of Henryk Górecki, it’s full of ceremony and metaphysics, suggesting a sort of biblical parable about the redemption of the soul through angelic intervention. This gives “The Soul,” danced Friday by David Hovhannisyan, a lot of opportunity for emoting and frenzied gesticulating. But Lang hasn’t built much of a narrative into the dance, so there’s no sense of story or shape. Instead, there’s a lot of dark, moody lighting and warmed-over Martha Graham.
