Renowned Milwaukee-born choreographer-dancer John Neumeier reflects on career

CHICAGO - Seventy years later and renowned choreographer-dancer John Neumeier can still pick out where he sat when he saw his first live ballet performance, perched alongside his mother on the third floor of Milwaukee's Pabst Theater.

He was 8 years old then, a kid from Bay View so in love with dance that anytime he watched a movie musical, he grew frustrated when dancing gave way to talking.

So, when a ballerina made her entrance for that long-ago performance at the Pabst, Neumeier said he thought to himself, "Please, don't let her talk."

Dance has been his life's work, taking Neumeier from Marquette University, where he graduated in 1961, to Germany, where since 1973 he has been director and chief choreographer of Hamburg Ballet.

He's back in America, overseeing Gluck's "Orpheus and Eurydice" at Lyric Opera of Chicago. As director, choreographer and designer, his artistic vision will be imprinted on the collaboration that joins the talents of Lyric Opera and the Joffrey Ballet.

Even a veteran like Neumeier had butterflies heading into Saturday's opening.

He recently took a break from rehearsals to talk with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about his life and career. Sitting in a small, windowless office backstage at Lyric Opera, he spoke with precision and passion about dance and warmth about his hometown.

He's 78 and continues to look forward. He has projects lined up through the middle of 2020.

"My most important thing is creation," he said. "To create a ballet means that you create a new world."

He smiled knowingly when reminded of his November 1962 debut at Royal Opera House in London, dancing in "Ondine" with Geraldine Chaplin, the fourth child of Charlie Chaplin.

"This was John's life dream to be a dancer and go to Europe," his mother, Lucille, a seamstress, told the Milwaukee Sentinel. "He has been saving his money for this since he was a little boy. He never asked us for a cent."

Neumeier was the middle son of three, growing up in a small house on E. Lincoln Ave. in Bay View. His father, Albert, worked ships along Lake Michigan, rising to become a captain of the S.S. Madison, a car ferry.

From his parents, he grasped his mother's artistry and his father's work ethic.

"My parents were supportive," he said. "When I think back, I'm very very grateful for that, particularly my father who really couldn't understand what I was trying to do, but at the same time was never negative with what I was trying to do."

He added, "Neither of them could probably understand the dimension of what it really meant to dedicate yourself to this kind of career. And I think they were probably skeptical, probably worried how I would make it and what I would do in this kind of work. But they were never negative."

He closes his eyes and remembers the neighborhood, the local bank and drugstore, two small restaurants nearby on S. Kinnickinnic Ave., a dime store and a dry goods store.

"That kind of store doesn't exist anymore. I sound like I'm from the wild west," he said.

One day, he ventured to the local library and picked out a book on Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. He was 11.

"There were three or four books about ballet," he said. "One of them was 'The Tragedy of Nijinsky,' with a pink cover. It was wonderful. It made me see a dancer, who happened to be a genius dancer, as a human being."

Reading the book was the beginning of Neumeier's long fascination with Nijinsky. Neumeier has a vast collection of Nijinsky artifacts, including the dancer's own artwork as well as memorabilia, sculptures and books.

Overall, Neumeier said he owns around 13,000 books on dance.

As a youngster, he took tap and acrobatics classes. Later, he studied ballet at the Stone-Camyra School in Chicago and also modern dance with Sybil Shearer, a teacher in Northbrook, Ill.

At Marquette University, where he studied English literature, he met the most influential figure of his early career, the Rev. John Walsh, director of the theater program.

Neumeier said Walsh told him: "You are a dancer."

He was a dancer and more, choreographing his first ballet while at Marquette.

"My philosophy of art was developed through the work of Father Walsh," he said.

After graduation and a six-month stint in the military, he was off to Europe, landing at the Royal Ballet School and then on to the Stuttgart Ballet and Frankfurt Ballet before arriving in Hamburg.

"I never planned to stay in Europe," he said. "I never planned to stay in Germany. One thing led to another."

Over the years, Neumeier has choreographed more than 150 ballets.

"I guess choreography is like painting with the human being in time and space," he said.

Neumeier's grandest work is his version of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion," with the dancers draped in white. It has been performed worldwide, including in Milwaukee in 1988.

"Standing in the middle of that work in a sense is a dancer who tries to assume the role of Christ," he said.

In Gluck's "Orpheus and Eurydice," Neumeier seeks to connect the audience to a tale of timeless love. Orpheus, refusing to accept the death of Eurydice, travels to the Underworld to bring her back to life.

"Orpheus, in every version of the story, is an artist," he said. "As we say, a person is only dead when we forget them. The artist lets us not forget those whom he loves. She doesn't live again as a human being. She lives as a character in his work."

As the interview with Neumeier drew to a close, he talked about Milwaukee. He was in the city in March for the funeral of his younger brother, Robert. Several weeks later, he returned for another funeral after the death of a longtime friend, Joan Schwartz.

"It didn't feel like home but it didn't feel not like home; it's very hard to express," he said.

Neumeier paused and his eyes welled with tears.

To pursue his art, he left his home and ventured out into the world and achieved so many things.

"Many of the people that maybe were most important to you, never experienced that with you," he said.

He said in his brief, sad journeys back, he found Milwaukee to be "a comforting place."

"Orpheus and Eurydice" will be performed at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Saturday, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 6, 9, 12, 15. For more information go to www.lyricopera.org.