Tom Strini, the Journal Sentinel’s music and dance critic, blogs about concert music and dance and, sometimes, art and life.
At 7 p.m. Thursday (May 7), the Milwaukee Ballet will host an invitation-only screening of “William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet” at the Oriental Theater. The 51-minute film documents the creation of Shatner’s spoken-word CD, and the creation of Margo Sappington’s “Common People,” a dance set to six cuts from that CD. The Milwaukee Ballet premiered the dance in February of 2007 and will revive it May 14-17 at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall. “Isn’t that amazing” Shatner said, in a phone interview Tuesday. “We’re in the big theater. They’re in the small one.” Shatner has made some about the new “Star Trek,” and he and Abrams have needled each other over it via talk shows and the internet. Shatner says that, really, they’re pals. “J.J. and the whole cast came to a charity event I do every year in Los Angeles, and we laughed about all the fun we’ve had leading up to the release,” Shatner said. He even gave the director some friendly advice: “I told J.J. exactly what to do: Put me in it. And then he didn’t.” [Inside TOSAD Info: Shatner said that he will appear in a spoof of the new “Star Trek” on Jay Leno’s show Wednesday.]
“It was just intuition,” he said, “an intuition that a story might be there.”