Marize Fumero dances her final performances with the Milwaukee Ballet this month. Fumero trained in Cuba and danced with English National Ballet before moving to the United States in 2014. After 12 years with Milwaukee Ballet, she is retiring from the company – but not hanging up her pointe shoes entirely.
Fumero spoke with Milwaukee Magazine ahead of her last curtain call. She says it was difficult to pick the perfect show to end her Milwaukee Ballet career with, settling on Michael Pink’s Snow White prequel called Mirror Mirror. Fumero first performed as evil stepmother Claudia nearly a decade ago, and it was a role she was itching to come back to.
“The only person that thinks Claudia is not evil is me,” she says, “because I get to experience her when she’s sad, when she’s vulnerable.”
Those private moments, Fumero says, where women shed various masks – their makeup, their carefully curated looks and personas – are all shown onstage in Mirror Mirror, along with a cinematic original score, stunning sets and costumes, and Pink’s lyrical choreography. “This ballet has it all,” she says. “I think it’s perfect.”
Celebrate this year’s winners of the Betty Awards!
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
I’m not going to say you’re typecast, but you tend to dance the more complicated characters. The Queen of Hearts. Carmen. A provocative nun.
You can say it. I am totally typecast. It’s really, really easy for me to be evil onstage. I have to act more when I have to smile and be Sugar Plum than when I have to be evil.
People tend to stay a long time at Milwaukee Ballet and go through phases of life – growing up, having children. You have a 5-year-old son now. What has kept you here all this time?
Working with Michael Pink gave me the opportunity to discover artistry I did not have in me. I came with my technique. I came with my body. I came with expression in my face. I didn’t know how to cross the orchestra pit and tell a story to the audience. That was something that really cultivated me. All the Michael Pink ballets are forever in my heart. It’s different.
You’re now among the veterans in the company. How has the dynamic changed since you first danced Claudia a decade ago?
I always like to be an example of how to work, because that’s what they teach us in Cuba. When we go to school in Cuba, they call it “military ballet.” That’s the secret recipe. Discipline is everything for a dancer. I think I tried to show the young generation how important it is to repeat every time. How important it is to never mark. How important it is to exercise outside the studio. You have to destroy yourself physically today to get a result tomorrow. That’s what I want them to see.
What happens next?
I will keep dancing. Now, for me, dancing is easy. Finally, I guess, after 30 years of work, your body knows what to do. So, I feel like can explore a little bit more on my own schedule. One of the reasons I’m stepping down from Milwaukee Ballet is because I need to pick up my son from school. I never get to do that. I can do evil really well, but I’m a very sentimental person.
See Fumero in Mirror Mirror from Nov. 6-8 at the Marcus Performing Arts Center.
