Milwaukee Ballet gives creative collaboration-based ‘MXE’ show
Creativity is an unpredictable combination of ideas and energy.
The Milwaukee Ballet’s “MXE: Milwaukee Mixed,” a program of five world premieres based on collaborations with Milwaukee-based musical artists, opened Thursday at the Pabst Theater offering up creativity at it finest.
Garrett Glassman’s “Affixed” is a study/indictment of our culture’s addiction to screens, which featured eight dancers unable to tear their attention from various static-snowfilled television screens as they danced.
Set to captivating, melancholy music by the Tontine Ensemble, it opened with dancers facing television screens, with their backs to the audience. The screens proved a magnet for the dancers, particularly in a wonderful pas de
trois for a couple and a screen. Nicole Teague-Howell’s “Pull” was an enigmatic, mesmerizing work for nine dancers clad in a mottled, taupe color and dancing with faces covered.
Moving to haunting ephemeral music by LUXI, the dancers creating a palpable sense of yearning, touching emotions and evoking memories without dependence on a narrative through-line.
Timothy O’Donnell’s “more truth than poetry” placed Dasha Kelly Hamilton reciting her poetry onstage, in a high-energy, sometimes aggressive work that demanded constant attention.
Kelly was absolutely riveting as the ensemble gave life and shape to such vivid phrases as “kaleidoscopes of curated memory,” jointly delivering an invigorating experience.
Isaac Sharratt’s “We Roam” went up tempo.
This was exuberant, athletic, precise dancing wedded to infectious, Celtic/bluegrass-infused music by The Vitrolum Republic. Engaging, touching, and somehow sweet, the piece made on want to get up and join the dancing.
The evening ended with a gleeful fusion of jazz and dance in Petr Zahradnicek’s “Conflux.” The dancers moved from the stage to an open section of the raised orchestra pit with a delightful wouldn’t-it-be-fun-to-dance-down-there abandon.
A fusion of ballroom, modern and classical styles, filled with little bursts of dancers bouncing to subdivisions of the beat, and playful interaction between dancers and the musicians of Bonifas Electric Band, the piece was toe-tapping, captivating, beautiful fun.
Jason Fassl’s lighting designs were clean, sometimes stark, and always dramatic and effective.
Costumes for each number, created by Mary Piering and the Milwaukee Ballet Costume Department, were done in a minimalist, urban vein, supporting mood and tone without visual clutter.
“MXE: Milwaukee Mixed” will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the Pabst Theater, 144 E. Wells St. For tickets, visit www.milwaukeeballet.org, or call the Pabst Theater box office at (414) 286-3663.