In all of artistic director Dani Kuepper's years with Danceworks, she had never been concerned that the performance space being used for the company's next concert would smell fishy. But before committing to a project that would spawn the original piece "Stone Soup," she dispatched a colleague to an old factory in Bay View to confirm what Kuepper's nose had told her.
Audiences would not be grossed out by a slimy odor. An artistic director can't be too careful when her dancers are sharing a building with tanks full of perch.
"Stone Soup," which opens Thursday, is the first Danceworks Performance Company production to be staged in an unconventional space. The program will be presented at Sweet Water Organics, a mostly indoor urban farm that operates in a grimy old building formerly used to manufacture parts for overhead industrial cranes.
Founded in 2008, the business uses a sustainable aquaponics system inspired by Growing Power's Will Allen to raise perch and grow vegetables, mostly lettuce, wheat grass, sprouts, watercress and herbs. In the recirculating setup, fish waste serves as a natural fertilizer for plant growth, and the vegetation acts as a water filter.
Although it operates a small retail store onsite, most of Sweet Water's output is sold to a seafood wholesaler and local restaurants, including Comet Cafe, Honeypie Cafe, Coquette Cafe and La Merenda.
"Stone Soup" will be presented in a large open room Sweet Water uses for gatherings including wedding receptions. Danceworks is renting seating -- a mix of bleachers and risers with chairs -- for the audience. Capacity will be about 200.
The concrete factory floor will require the dancers to wear sneakers and limit the amount of jumping they can do. The "Stone Soup" choreography compensates for that with a lot of lifting and turning, according to Kuepper.
During an interview at Sweet Water the artistic director said her company was partnering with the urban farm on this project because they share many of the same positive community values. Both make a point of reaching out to their neighborhoods and the city.
"We teach life skills," Kuepper explained. Danceworks' Mad Hot Ballroom and Tap program for school kids is wildly popular. "We teach students how to be respectful of themselves and others."
"Stone Soup" is a departure from the customary Danceworks fare. "We seldom work with a commissioned score, but we do here with Seth Warren-Crow's music," Kuepper said.
The company also seldom uses live musicians, but will mix live and pre-recorded music for the concert. The score incorporates water sounds, reflecting the perch farm operating in the next room.
"Stone Soup's" choreography suggests the circularity of Sweet Water's aquaponic agricultural system, and the cause and effect of cultivating crops. The rectangular shape of the factory room strongly influenced the piece.
"We have a really weird long (horizontal) dance we would never have made if not forced into it," Kuepper said. "There is not a lot of depth but a great deal of width in the space. It is not very traditional for us, and it is a challenge for the lighting designer."
A pre-show mini-tour of Sweet Water Organics is included in the price of admission to "Stone Soup," and that has affected the choreography. "The dance is very abstract. It does not have a clear narrative," Kuepper continued.
"I had the idea that people should take a tour and then see the dance so we don't have to force a narrative. The dance and music are about form and shape and design."
Unlike most Danceworks concerts, "Stone Soup" is a single continuous piece, without blackouts, stops and starts, and changes in music. It ebbs and flows, with periods of visual palate cleansing for the audience.
All of this was created through a collaboration of the piece's nine dancers and Kuepper, and that too is unusual for the company. Associate artistic director Kim Johnson-Rockafellow, an 11-year Danceworks veteran who is dancing in "Stone Soup," talked about its development.
"This is the most unique way I have ever worked. Everyone was part of the process. We got to work in an entirely different way, and it is a breath of fresh air.
"It has been really satisfying as a dancer. All of us have ownership."
"Stone Soup" runs Thursday through Sunday at Sweet Water Organics, 2151 S. Robinson Ave.
Damien has been around so long, he was at Summerfest the night George Carlin was arrested for speaking the seven dirty words you can't say on TV. He was also at the Uptown Theatre the night Bruce Springsteen's first Milwaukee concert was interrupted for three hours by a bomb scare. Damien was reviewing the concert for the Milwaukee Journal. He wrote for the Journal and Journal Sentinel for 37 years, the last 29 as theater critic.
During those years, Damien served two terms on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, a term on the board of the association's foundation, and he studied the Latinization of American culture in a University of Southern California fellowship program. Damien also hosted his own arts radio program, "Milwaukee Presents with Damien Jaques," on WHAD for eight years.
Travel, books and, not surprisingly, theater top the list of Damien's interests. A news junkie, he is particularly plugged into politics and international affairs, but he also closely follows the Brewers, Packers and Marquette baskeball. Damien lives downtown, within easy walking distance of most of the theaters he attends.
