Milwaukee Ballet's 'Genesis' competition is a night of exciting surprises on stage
I hope Milwaukee Ballet's biannual Genesis International Choreographic Competition is as much fun for the dancers as it is for the audience.
The premise is simple: MB brings in three successful choreographers from around the globe, gives each eight dancers and 90 hours of rehearsal time, and they create original 20-minute dances. The winning choreographer, as judged by a panel of visiting experts, gets a contract to return to create another dance in a future season.
Sitting in the cozy confines of the Pabst Theater, audience members know only this: Settings will be minimal to nonexistent, and Jason Fassl's lighting designs will be crucial, virtually a ninth performer in each dance.
We're ready to be surprised. And we were.
Italian choreographer Lorenzo di Loreto's "Baroccata," set to music by Vivaldi and Bach, is a lively, generally comic riff on every courtly drama of power, intrigue and seduction you can think of. It includes one dancer grabbing another's butt, followed by the aggrieved party knocking the offender flat. Di Loreto shift gears to a Voces8 performance of music by contemporary composer Eric Whitacre for a more serious and romantic pas de deux by Alyssa Schilke and Garrett Glassman.
"This piece explores the emergence of light in the darkness," Taiwanese choreographer Tsai Hsi Hung writes in her program note for "The living quality." She backs up that bland, Monet-ish little statement with choreography that roars onstage: female dancers with flowing long hair grappling with men; sharp, fast arm movements from everyone; driving neoclassical music composed by Liu Zhu-chi. This wholly unexpected dance is like a time-lapse video of plant growth, with shoots constantly bursting into life.
Australian choreographer Jack Lister's "Mr. Sheen" opens with Lizzie Tripp-Molina looking like she stepped out of a David Bowie video, in the androgynous outfit of white shirt, black trousers and long gloves. That's what both men and women wear in "Mr. Sheen," which seems to be about public facades and the price people pay for putting them up. It's the most theatrical and least dancey of the night's three works, with dancers occasionally vocalizing. The discontinuous background music keeps returning to a segment, at times distorted, of Frank Sinatra's monologue "The Tea Break" from "Sinatra at the Sands."
The Genesis programs naturally attract an audience of diehards ready to be surprised. Thursday's opening night crowd responded warmly and enthusiastically, with much chatter about the dances between segments.
Audience members also get to vote for their favorite. Without disrespecting the others, my vote would go to Tsai Hsi Hung's "The living quality."
Postscript: The judges selected Tsai Hsi Hung's "The living quality" as the competition winner. She will be invited to return to Milwaukee Ballet to create another work. Audience members voted Lorenzo di Loreto's "Baroccata" as the "Audience Favorite" winner.
If you go
Milwaukee Ballet's Genesis International Choreographic Competition continues through Feb. 11 at the Pabst Theater, 144 E. Wells St. For tickets, visit milwaukeeballet.org or call (414) 902-2103.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Ballet's 'Genesis' competition is full of surprises
