Danceworks’ “Art to Art” melds visual arts and movement

If you like sculptures, you would check out an art museum. If you like music or theater, you would buy tickets to a stage event. If you like dance, you would go to the ballet.

What if you could get a sense of all four different art forms — all in one place?

Danceworks Studio and Performance Center in Milwaukee will offer that chance this coming weekend with the fifth installment of the Art to Art series. Local choreographers have collaborated with film, music, theater, and visual artists to create unique performances that are nothing like a typical dance performance.

This year’s show includes a piece in which the performers dance while being restricted by 10 kinetic sculptures within the space (see picture). Another piece features a real, ‘live’ robot. In contrast, one of the dances is set in a surreal and dreamlike undersea atmosphere—complete with a live harp player. A dance called Winged focuses on the life and movement of birds. Finally, the last piece uses both live and recorded music to reflect on alliances which are formed and broken.

Andrea Hill Johnson is the show’s curator. She explains that each choreographer had to collaborate with at least one artist of a different medium.

“The show gives dancers a chance to meet other local artists they may never meet otherwise. Milwaukee is a fairly small dance community, and there aren’t always a lot of venues for choreographers to show their work…Often hooking up with someone of a different genre opens up their options for performance for an audience,” Johnson says.

Twenty-three-year-old Simon Eichinger is one of the choreographers. He liked having this chance to collaborate with other creative minds.

“There’s always new ways to do things. When you throw a painter’s mind with a dancer’s mind, the discussion that can take place there can take both artists to new spaces—which is, for me at least, what art is about,” he says.

Eichinger is a recent graduate of UW-Milwaukee with a BFA in Dance. The name of his piece is You’re a Robot, Remote Control Yourself. It explores machines and technology, and how they relate to humans. In keeping with the theme, Eichinger incorporates visual art into his piece in the form of a functional robot. While it’s fun to watch a robot perform with the dancers in a sort of Star Wars-style, Eichinger explains there is a deeper meaning to the metal.

“The input that you’ve gained in your life so far, from the moment you were born up till now, every experience you had, everything that you learned and stuff, has created who you are.” After a moment of thought he adds, “And that’s kind of like, putting information and code into a machine to make it function a certain way, so in that way we’re all kind of robots.”

In addition to working with engineer Yuri Zobachev on the robot, Eichinger chose to work on the musical arrangement with longtime friend Luke Wieting, a composer completing graduate school at Columbia College.

In keeping with his mix of many mediums within the piece, the dancer/choreographer hopes the audience comes away with a mix of emotions.

“I would like them to maybe smile a little bit, I would also like them to feel a little bit uncomfortable. I think about my audience a lot when I’m making my piece, and I want them to not be stagnant in their feeling. So I want them to have some ups and downs and have some interesting moments,  maybe more calming moments. Just so there’s some variety, a good palette of things that the audience can go through as the piece goes on.”

Danceworks provides each choreographer with a small amount of money for props and free studio space—which includes lighting, sound, and a house manager.

“This is a really good opportunity for local, young choreographers to get their work out there, let it be seen, and start to build a resume—saying they created work for this concert,” Hill Johnson says.

The audience gets something out of it as well. Hill Johnson states that this is a unique dance show, that you really don’t have to be a huge dance fan to enjoy it.

“I think, especially when you come to something like Art to Art, there’s something for everyone. I mean, in this show there’s wonderful metal sculptures; there’s a robot…there’s a robot in a piece, I mean, c’mon! We’ve got a lot to share, so I think anybody could get something out of it no matter what, especially since it’s just going to be so varied.”

She finally adds: “I feel it’s very beneficial for the city, to see these young people, see what’s going on, how we can be a hotbed for new work. Whether it be new dance, or new music created, or new artwork created, it’s very inspiring.”

Art to Art runs this Friday and Saturday, 7/31 and 8/1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Danceworks Studio Theatre, located at 1661 N. Water Street. You can find more information, including a list of other upcoming performances, at Danceworksmke.org