Babies certainly can bust a few moves while crawling or squirming around in their cribs. But it’s their first steps that mark the entrée into “dance”—it’s “genesis” you might say.
So it was appropriate that Enrico Morelli ended his lovely world premiere, “The Noise of Whispers,” with an image of a woman taking her first wobbly steps, gently helped along by caring compatriots that moved one limb after another to get her on her way. Appropriately, Morelli’s piece was part of the Milwaukee Ballet’s Genesis—2017, the choreography completion it holds every other year.
“Whispers” shared the program with two other brand new works, each set on an octet of MB company members, but it was clearly the stand out. Lizzie Tripp sets the tone at the outset, alone as the lights come up, her gestures are controlled, taut–reflecting the raw angst of Adrien Casalis’s electronic score. Others join her, and the first half of the dance suggests the cold alienation of the modern era.
Shifting the music to the warmth of Chopin, Morelli brought the octet into more ensembles, as if a caring community was rising from the ashes of indifference. There was a lovely “chorus line” in which the dancers undulated across the stage, as if wind-swept. And the “baby steps” motif appeared and reappeared as individuals shifted places in the ensemble. Throughout, there was a strong sense of ensemble, architecture, and form. And, in its abstracted way, a sense of drama, culminating in those universal first steps—taken as the lights faded.
Photo by Mark Frohna
Mariana Oliveira took the bold step of constructing a story ballet, retelling the tragic love triangle of Pagliacci with stock commedia dell’arte figures in the main roles. Rather than use the music of Leoncavallo’s opera, Oliveira sets the dance to Charlie Chaplin’s original music for his 1928 movie, The Circus. Chaplin physical comedy—his expert clowning—inspires the movement vocabulary as well.
Photo by Nathaniel Davauer
Pagliacci is full of wit and charm. The company is dressed simply in black with skullcaps and red clown noses, and Oliveira invents a vocabulary that evokes the spirit of Chaplinesque physicality: quick little wrist flicks, flexed foot kicks. The pas de deux between Columbina (Annia Hidalgo) and Pierrot (Isaac Sharratt) is full of droll, innovative ideas. She seems to run out of steam, however, for the final payoff, Pierrot’s final solo in which he agonizes over the loss of his love. Sharratt makes the best of it, but in grasping for big emotions, the dance loses its freshness and opts instead for boilerplate sentiment.
In a program note, George Williamson writes that he wanted to create a ballet that reflected “the sense of strangers coming together to embark upon a journey.” His Wonderers succeeds, but not always in satisfying ways. You can sense a freedom in the way the dancers move here—lots of expansive gestures with wide turns and open stances. But Williamson seems to favor individual expression at the expense of form. Wonderers offers the dancers ample opportunity to demonstrate technical assurance and physical chops, but there’s only a fleeting sense of structure here, and some of the ensemble work seems awkward and under-rehearsed.
Genesis 2017 continues at the Pabst Theater through Sunday.
On the Horizon
After you see and vote for your favorite choreographer in Genesis 2017, make plans to hear some great music.
It’s a big weekend, indeed, for Present Music, which takes its annual In the Chamber program to three separate venues. There’s still time to catch the final performance at UWM’s Zelazo Center, which primarily features signature works from the 20th century: Bartok, Ives, Satie, Stravinsky. And the rather wild Poème Symphonique for 100 Metronomes by György Ligeti.
Out west, the celebrated Venice Baroque Orchestra makes a stop at Brookfield’s Wilson Center. It’s one of the finest chamber ensembles in the world, and just received raves for its performance at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center (Anne Midgette: “one of the most adventurous and interesting of chamber ensembles”).
For early music of a different stripe, Early Music Now presents the American debut tour of Ars Longa de la Habana, the Cuban ensemble that offers a program of 17th & 18th century music that explores the Africa’s influence on music of the colonial Americas.
The Philomusica Quartet continues its concert series at Wisconsin Lutheran College with a music of American Frank Bridge, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, a string quartet based on one of the early piano sonatas.
Photo by Jordi Suol
And if you’re more inclined to the jazz side of the music spectrum, Milwaukee is hosting one of the great jazz guitarists at two different venues this weekend. Peter Bernstein joins Milwaukee regulars Mark Davis (piano), Jeff Hamman (bass), and Dave Bayless (drums), for two nights at Blu. Then connects Sunday night with the Dan Truedell organ trio for more music at Evan Christian’s new club, Gibralter, in Walker’s Point.
