By the time we reached the end of Encore, Milwaukee Ballet’s mixed repertory concert running two weekends at the Baumgartner Center for Dance, I could hardly remember where we’d started. That’s not because DaYoung Jung’s Vignettes wasn’t memorable – or that the program is arduous or long. Indeed, the first half flies by, ping-ponging centuries from Jung’s 2022 stunner to a 19th-century relic, then back and forth again.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
It’s a bit of a time-traveling mind trip, but it works, in large part thanks to swift transitions crossfading one piece into the next. The act ends with a selection of divertissements from 1842’s Napoli, a deceptively difficult exemplar of August Bournonville’s distinctive technique. On Saturday afternoon, the task fell to dancers Parker Brasser-Vos, Mihai Costache, Alana Griffith, Jennifer Hackbarth, Raven Loan and Emery Meroni, who take turns with Bournonville’s blithe and bouncy jumps and precise positions of the arms, head and torso which imbue Napoli with a kind of coy joie de vivre. These facile dancers – who in the evening’s other pieces pedal in far more contemporary styles – are terrifically exposed in this tiny-by-comparison studio theater. Try landing a double tour with your arms down when you can see the whole audience’s facial expressions. (The arm thing makes it very, very hard.) And they do.
The program’s other classical piece is the pas de deux from The Talisman, an 1889 ballet by Marius Petipa that exoticizes India and, thankfully, apart from this excerpt, is largely ignored today. In moments, Jacqueline Sugianto and Flynn Stelfox seemed a bit apprehensive in these roles. But the times when they managed to let go and trust in themselves and each other, it’s pretty thrilling stuff.
Tucked between the classics is a brand-new duet set by company member Eric Figueredo, performed Saturday afternoon by Kristen Marshall and Marko Micov. Figueredo picked music by Max Richter for Where the Light Touches, which perhaps ironically does not at all describe the swirling tangle of limbs Marshall and Micov work through almost entirely in the dark. What we can see – where the light touches, if you will – is further proof Figueredo is a burgeoning talent from within the company’s ranks.
He’s in good company. While Aussie choreographer Timothy O’Donnell has since departed Milwaukee Ballet, he left a body of work developed during and after his time dancing there. Others, too: Amanda Lewis and Garrett Glassman, for example, plus Figueredo, contributed to a similarly styled program about this time last year.
For this one, though, the back half of the program is a revival of O’Donnell’s The Kids Have Names, a heartfelt jaunt through the trials and tribulations of high school set to a Radiohead mixtape. O’Donnell and the cast strike a tricky balance that can be cringeworthy when twenty- and thirty-somethings pose as teenagers in Catholic school uniforms. It’s not. The dancers exude a youthful glow as they venture through first loves, standing up to bullies, losing faith and the overall unease that comes with that time of life. It’s more My So-Called Life than 13 Reasons Why, with props like slide projectors and passing notes resembling a fictional high school from decades ago. Nevertheless, O’Donnell dedicated the work to today’s kids, who might feel ignored or dismissed by grown-ups who tend to view their struggles as trivial. The end – fittingly set to every weird kid’s anthem, “Creep” – is an apt reminder we were all once there, and kids’ big feelings matter.
Again, this all started with Vignettes, a simple-by-comparison, smartly crafted smattering of beautiful small bites that, in hindsight, was so good I wish it had been more of an entrée. What a journey, indeed.
Encore runs again from Feb. 5-8 at the Baumgartner Center for Dance.
