Dance in a less Wild Space

Earlier this season, we saw the Wild Space Dance Company scampering about the former bank building that now houses the Milwaukee County Historical Society. Before that, we followed Debra Loewen’s dancers through a dark early autumn night at the Lynden Sculpture Garden.

Thursday through Saturday, Loewen’s company will occupy the Milwaukee Rep’s Stiemke Theater with a new show, How to Get from Here to There. The Stiemke, with its plain open space, great lighting and sound, and professional crew, has been Wild Space’s preferred great indoors for some years. The space is a good fit for the company in every way. Jan Kellogg, the company’s lighting designer and artistic advise, doesn’t have to worry about running hundreds of feet of cable to get lighting to the middle of a park lawn.

“It’s nice to be on a floor that’s more forgiving,” Loewen said, referring to the stony terrazzo of the Historical Society building. “It doesn’t matter if it rains. And I love the theater. The Rep is a very well-run organization, and they like having us there. The crew is great.”

Nine-year Wild Space veterans Dan Schuchart and Monica Rodero joined Loewen in the interview. Loewen recently elevated the two to artistic associates of the company. They co-created this show. They also collaborated with Loewen on the funny and engaging Speaking of Happiness, last year’s Stiemke piece.

Here to There came together through a typically long development and rehearsal process. The three wrote scenes, lined out movement together or individually, hashed it out, fitted it together. Then they tried it out on dancers. They seized on happy accidents, took dancer suggestions and contributions, and reworked the piece into a final form. The piece veered this way and that throughout, but they always had a compass: Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel, and the philosophical questions Botton raises about the whole idea of travel.

“Why do we want to go places?” Loewen asked, repeating one of the questions they kept in mind as they created the piece. “I mean, you go there, but when you get there, there becomes here.”

Pretty good Lou Costello imitation, there, Loewen. But seriously, folks…

“Travel and dance have an obvious connections,” she said. “When you move from one side of the stage to the other, you call it traveling. We’re using the term as an umbrella of sorts. It could be travel among emotional states.”

“It’s about all the messes people get into when they travel and how you deal with the messes,” Schuchart said.

“We literally have messes on stage, and we have to clean them up,” Rodero said.

All three are world travelers, so they came to the topic with experience. Schuchart and Rodero, a couple offstage, have traveled extensively together. In addition to their work with Wild Space, they create and perform work as a duo. Last year’s Happiness show built on some of their routines. They’re funny people and clever with words; Here to There will have some dialog and, no doubt, some punchlines.

“Dan and Monica have a GPS duet,” Loewen said. “The voice starts off giving them directions, but then goes in other directions.”

As rehearsals went on, aspects of the dancers’ personalities seeped into the characters, and that’s fine with the creative team.

“Things happen in rehearsal,” Loewen said. “One of the younger dancers seemed a little frustrated, and one day she sort of cried out, ‘Let’s take a road trip! I never get to go anywhere.’ So we ran with that. As the show goes on, you start to recognize the lonesome one, the helpless one, the explorer, the carefree one.”

“Monica seems to be the all-knowing one,” Schuchart deadpanned.

“I win!” Rodero chirped.

The timing of a show about travel turned out to be apt for Rodero and Schuchart. This will be their last Wild Space production for a while. The two, who have BFAs in dance from UWM, will travel to the University of California-Riverside to start MFA programs in the fall.

Keep in touch, and bon voyage.

Dancers: Rodero, Schuchart, Angela Frederick, Liz Fransee, Allison Kaminsky, Jessie Mae Scibek, May-Yeng Vang-Strath.

Wild Space’s How to Get from Here to There runs at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday at the Milwaukee’s Rep’s Stiemke Theater. Tickets are $25 and $20, $15 for students. Call the Rep’s box office, 414 224-9490. For more information, visit the Wild Space website.