Multiyear Community-Based Creative Research Project Culminates in World Premiere Work at Winterdances – Resilience
MILWAUKEE_The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts Department of Dance will present the world premiere of CARE, a new dance-theatre work created through a multiyear creative research project. The premiere will be featured in Winterdances: Resilience with performances Feb. 5-8, at UWM’s Mainstage Theater.
Through the CARE: Illuminating Milwaukee’s Queer and Trans Communities Project, the Department of Dance commissioned acclaimed American choreographer, writer, director and filmmaker David Roussève to create an original work in collaboration with Milwaukee’s LGBTQ+ organization Diverse & Resilient. The project unfolded through multiple phases of community engagement, storytelling and choreographic research beginning in 2024.
Roussève made several visits to Milwaukee to work with community members and UWM students. Through interviews and storytelling workshops, he developed a work that blends narratives from Milwaukee’s queer and trans communities with a hybrid dance form combining contemporary choreography and vogue. The resulting piece emphasizes stories of resilience, care and joy.
CARE was developed in response to a political climate in the Midwest that continues to struggle with gender diversity and queer identity. While Wisconsin was the first state to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation more than 40 years ago, recent legislative efforts have underscored the ongoing challenges faced by transgender and queer communities. The project seeks to restore and illuminate LGBTQ+ voices that have been disenfranchised within heteronormative, white, cis-dominant cultures.
The commission was created with and for Milwaukee’s BIPOC LGBTQ+ community, exploring how communities under assault care for themselves by redefining family, community and support. The project engaged with the aging HIV community and Milwaukee’s vogue dancers, groups that have long reimagined “family” and “mother/father” relationships. Themes of mentorship, sex education and health care were central to the work.
During the 2025-26 production year, the project’s final phases centered Milwaukee vogue dancers through choreographic research, storytelling and dance-literacy engagements with participants from Diverse & Resilient, alongside UWM dance majors. Vogue dancers were positioned as experts within the creative process, contributing to the development of a nuanced hybrid movement style.
Rehearsals and production began in 2025, with Roussève assembling text, narratives and movement drawn from stories gathered in earlier phases. The final work features local dancers Richard Brasfield, Jacques Infiniti Hall and DaCosta Martin, who collaborated closely with Roussève on the vogue and ballroom sections of the piece.
The completed dance-theater work anchors the CARE Project with vital visibility for social change, centering queer and trans BIPOC communities in Milwaukee. As Roussève confronts his own experiences as an aging, HIV-positive artist, the work engages intergenerational perspectives, exploring mentorship, mental health and what it means to become an elder within the LGBTQ+ community. The project emphasizes the systems of care that persist in the face of ongoing challenges.
The world premiere of CARE: Illuminating Milwaukee’s Queer and Trans Communities will be presented as part of Winterdances: Resilience.
About UWM Peck School of the Arts
Excellent performing and visual arts training, a full calendar of events and deep connections with Milwaukee’s creative economy make the Peck School of the Arts a destination for aspiring artists and creative entrepreneurs from around the world. Immersed in hands-on learning and mentored by faculty who are working artists, students explore uncharted territory in art and design, dance, film & animation, music and theatre. That’s because our faculty not only educate and inspire the next generation of artists but also welcome them as essential collaborators united on a mission to change the world through the arts.
About UWM
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has an ambitious mission as both a top-tier research university and an access institution, striving to ensure that students have equitable opportunities to earn a college degree. UWM educates a diverse student body of more than 23,000 students from 83 countries. About 43% of its undergraduates are first-generation college students. Its unique and top-rated programs include Wisconsin’s only accredited schools of architecture and public health, the only North American school dedicated solely to freshwater sciences and a film program ranked among the top 50 in the world. It has the largest and top-rated online education program in Wisconsin. UW-Milwaukee partners with leading companies to conduct joint research, promote entrepreneurship, provide student internships and serve as an economic engine for southeastern Wisconsin. The Princeton Review named UW-Milwaukee a 2026 “Best Midwestern” university based on overall academic excellence and student reviews.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
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