It felt kind of sparse for an opening night, but the weather had begun to get ugly shifting into the weekend. Milwaukee Ballet Artistic Director Michael Pink thanked everyone for braving such fierce weather to see the show.
The curtains raised on the opening piece. Theatrical fog drifted across a dimly lit stage. Dancers stood in silent, silhouetted motionlessness in various poses. The World Premiere of Lila York's "Coronach" was dazzlingly minimalist. Lights slowly raised on men dressed in simple tan and women in flowing, simple dresses of tan kissed with a wash of color. Agile dancers in tan tumbled across a tan background, limbs extended in so many interesting directions at times.
The Milwaukee Ballet company was beautifully animate under York's technically sophisticated choreography. The music filling all the acoustic space was "Maninyas," a concerto for violin and orchestra by contemporary Australian composer Ross Edwards. As "Coronach's" half hour wears on, watching tan figures dance around against a tan background becomes peacefully numbing. It's as though York has orchestrated a dance interpretation of a sandstorm in a desert, delicate and beautiful.
After a brief intermission, the stage was set for Kathryn Posin's "Scheherazade." The curtain opens once more on figures in silhouette. Many dancers in synch formed a single, many limbed figure reminiscent of the Hindu god Siva as Nataraja, the King of the Dance. Lights gracefully shifted as the dancers broke apart into individuals forms.
Aaron Copp's lighting here was just as dazzling as it was in "Coronach," only here there were a wider range of textures. This increase in visual complexity was present in every other major aspect of the performance other than the choreography. With so much going on and a very specific story to be told, Posin's choreography felt like an elegant extension of the ancient tale without ever completely overpowering it. Costuming was excellently stylized in a form inspired by the ancient Middle East.
Gradually the story unfolded with a little help from Mr. Rimsky-Korsakoff. Under the baton of Andrews Sill, the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra provided excellent melodic structure for the show. Posin has done a remarkable job of providing embellishment to Rimsky-Korsakoff's basic structure.
The evening provided some alchemy between ancient prose and slightly more recent orchestral music animating flesh, blood and bone to retell the story of Schehereazade: a woman who kept herself from certain death by telling stories every night for well over two years. Familiar stories of Sinbad, Aladdin and the Flying Horse flowed quite elegantly for much of the show. All in all it was quite an entertaining evening.
As always, however, there were minor details tripping things up a bit. On opening night a ballerina's crown fell off during a casually brilliant performance. Moments later, she ad-libbed gracefully to pick it up as Posin's choreography directed attention elsewhere. The rather inelegant projections cast upon the stage were stylistically interesting and did serve to illustrate clearly what was going on.
Also on opening night, there was a brief mishap in which someone had projected the names of the sponsors onto the walls of the auditorium. These projections are nicely conspicuous when you walk in before the show and sit down, but when they're projected during the performance, it washes out an otherwise intricately textured performance. With a group as overwhelmingly talented as the Milwaukee Ballet Company, such minor details aren't overpowering, only incidental. They're there just long enough to serve as reminders for just how dazzling a show like this really is.
The Milwaukee Ballet Company's "Scheherazade" runs March 23-24 at The Pabst Theatre. Tickets range in price from $20 to $80 and are available by calling (414) 902-2103.
