Ballet review
The Milwaukee Ballet’s “To the Pointe” makes classics friendly for new audiences.
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the season artistic director Michael Pink and the Milwaukee Ballet are having is far from the one they planned. But in pirouetting to the new realities, the ballet is creating work that’s friendly to new audiences.
The ballet opened “To the Pointe” Thursday in two ways: as a live performance for a limited-capacity audience at its Baumgartner Center for Dance, 128 N. Jackson St., and as a video on demand for ticketholders through March 7. In line with city health regulations, the socially distanced live audience is limited to 25% of capacity, maxing out at 50 people.
“To the Pointe” features three classical ballets, plus choreography by Pink and Timothy O’Donnell in a kindred spirit, set on classical music. These works challenge the dancers to exhibit grace while being exact in their form and technique.
I watched the 55-minute video, which was directed and edited by O’Donnell, with camerawork by Pink, balletmaster Denis Malinkine and dancer Davit Hovhannisyan. All dancers wore masks during their performances.
Watching Jules Perrot’s famous “Pas de Quatre” (1845) is like seeing music in a visual form. Wearing white dresses, Marie Harrison-Collins, Elizabeth Collins, Lahna Vanderbush and Kristen Marshall weave in and out of each other, mirroring and altering phrases. Each gets a featured turn before the dance ends with a reprise of the group theme.
If I were watching this from an Uihlein Hall balcony or row S on the main floor, I would probably be taking in the movement as a whole. Looking at the dancers closely through the video, I see how individual each dancer’s movement is. Their masks and similarly dark hair would make it hard for me to pick one out of a lineup, but there’s no mistaking that each performance is singular.
The video format limits Pink’s ability to create the big spectacles and stories he is known for. But the consolation, for a nearsighted person like me, is seeing individual gestures and mirroring so well. Just as Prokofiev honored his ancestors in his “Classical” symphony while expanding on their vocabulary, Pink does the same in his “Symphony” for eight dancers, particularly with the four women, whose movements seemed to have touches of jazz in them.
“To the Pointe” also features O’Donnell’s noirish setting of Chopin etudes for Lizzie Tripp and Hovannisyan; the “Swan Lake” pas de trois by Alana Griffith, Itzel Hernandez and Barry Molina;
and the “Le Corsaire” pas de deux by Annia Hidalgo and Randy Crespo.
For ticket and video on demand info, visit milwaukeeballet.org.
Contact Jim Higgins at jim.higgins @jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jhiggy.