Out of the Shadow

Dancer Barry Molina is returning to the show that started his career at the Milwaukee Ballet.

IN 2011, BARRY MOLINA didn't know if he was going to keep dancing. The 18-year-old had studied at New York City's School of American Ballet and had spent the previous year in the second company at the Milwaukee Ballet, understudying. Despite dancing since he was 6 years old, he was losing his drive and couldn't quite envision a career in it anymore. He was understudying the role of Peter's Shadow for the world premiere of Michael Pink's Peter Pan. On the day of the first performance, the main company dancer had to drop out due to a health issue and Molina was called up.

“It was a little bit of a surprise to me,” Molina says. “We walked through the steps right before the show, and they put me on stage. … That moment, for me, was a turning point. It pushed me to want to do ballet as a career, just because it was so challenging and exciting.”

Molina was promoted to the company that same year and went on to many roles, one of the most popular being Fritz in the Ballet's annual production of The Nutcracker. In 2020, he was promoted to a leading artist at the Ballet, and 10 years after his first big role here, he was cast in Peter Pan again – this time as the lead.

“Barry's always been a Peter Pan in waiting,” says Pink, the Ballet's artistic director. Unfortunately, COVID shut the production down, but now, two years later, it and Molina are back. “I feel much more prepared to do it now,” Molina says. He is looking forward to the ballet's inventive flying sequences, in which he'll be lifted by cables, dancing while being pulled across the stage.

“Barry's accurate and detailed, and those are qualities that make him stand out,” Pink says. “I promoted him to a leading artist for exactly those reasons – he leads by the example of his daily work and dedication to his art form.”

See Peter Pan at Uihlein Hall, May 11-14.

Perez is an Indigenous poet, scholar and activist who is coming to UWM to read from his work. “He's an amazing, worldclass poet,” Callanan says.