For Orlando artists Mila and Gina Makarova, working together on and off stage is family time

Fans of the classical arts craving something outside the familiar canon have a cornucopia to choose from in the coming weeks, thanks to Opera Orlando and the Orlando Ballet. First, Philip Glass and Robert Moran's The Juniper Tree, an operatic adaptation of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, comes to the Dr. Phillips' Pugh Theater on May 10 and 11, featuring the Phantasmagoria performance troupe and original puppets by Nic Parks. Then, on May 16-19, the neighboring Steinmetz Hall hosts the U.S. premiere of U.K. choreographer Kenneth Tindall's Casanova, as part of a collaboration between Orlando Ballet, Colorado Ballet and Milwaukee Ballet.

Either production is an enormous undertaking on its own, but one multitalented mother-daughter team is intimately involved in both. At only 26 years old, Gina Makarova has a full-time job supervising wardrobe and wigs for the Orlando Ballet, where her dancer/choreographer mother, Mila Makarova, is a longtime instructor. Both are also original members of Phantasmagoria (which I co-founded) and will be onstage together with the Opera. I recently chatted with the pair at the Ballet's school during a brief break in their busy rehearsal schedule, to hear how they manage to balance their overlapping artistic efforts without fraying family bonds.

When I first met the Makarovas in the mid-aughts through my wife's company, Voci Dance, it would have been natural to assume that the 9-year-old in the corner had been unwillingly dragged to the rehearsal hall by her mom, but the opposite was actually accurate. The Wisconsin-born child of two ballet teachers, Mila had trained as a dancer but retired early due to injuries and was coaching elite gymnasts in Orlando when Gina dragged her back into the dance world. "She was like, 'Mommy, I want to dance. I want to be like you, I want to be a dancer. I don't want to go to the gym,'" recalls Mila.

"In hunting down schools, I found Orlando Ballet, and was taking some adult classes," Mila says, when a fellow student asked Mila to accompany her to an audition for Voci, which she was invited to join. (The friend was not.) "I had been retired for 10 years, and I had no intention of performing again," says Mila.

"I ... asked and pushed to start taking dance classes, and then had to go to every rehearsal with her for Voci and started dancing in the corner until they realized 'Oh, she can do it too, throw her on stage,'" adds Gina. "I definitely pulled her back into it."

In addition to dance, Gina developed an interest in music, and initially studied cello at the North Carolina School of Arts before switching to wig and makeup design. She says, "About three weeks into my first semester, I internally realized that I didn't want to be stuck in a practice room for the rest of my life." After graduating in 2020 during the peak of the pandemic, she returned home and landed her first professional gig with Opera Orlando as an assistant on Die Fledermaus. More work with them and with Orlando Ballet followed, until she joined the Ballet's wardrobe department full-time during last year's Nutcracker. Her responsibilities on Casanova include supervising styling of the stunning 63 hairpieces they've imported from overseas for the show: "Anything that involves wigs is me, and if it's more than I can handle on my own, I bring in a team."

Although Mila has choreographed Phantasmagoria since its first installment 15 years ago and is on her eighth show with Opera Orlando, Juniper Tree will be the first of Phantasmagoria's three collaborations with the Opera to feature both her and Gina (who also consults on the company's makeup) dancing onstage together. It's also the first to be stage-directed by Phantasmagoria's John DiDonna. Mila says, "In this one, we are the mechanism. We are on stage 100 percent of the time, and there is a lot of dancing and puppet manipulation."

Gina has been playing Pandora (of Greek mythology fame) in Phantasmagoria shows since she was a tween, and now says that "character-wise, Pandora and Gina don't have too much separation anymore." However, she says returning to the role after college felt very different. "Phantasmagoria is different. You can't expect it to not change after 15 years, but I definitely look at everything a little bit differently as an adult than I did as a kid. ... There was this period where I felt like I should be a veteran, but no one was listening to me because everyone's still looked at me like a kid. And it's finally starting to shift, so that's nice,"she says. "Now, more so than when I was younger, if something isn't working I'm not afraid to [say] 'what if we try this,' and sometimes we end up going with whatever I suggested, because it actually works."

One thing that appears unchanged over the years is the pair's lifelong love of creating art together.

"When I need an idea, I go to [Gina] first because her ideas are generally good," Mila says. "She's usually my first touch point [because] she knows me very, very well; she knows my strengths and my weaknesses, and she knows my instincts."

"From the time she was 8 with those first performances with Voci, it became very clear that I would rather be on stage with her than just about anyone else, because she proved that no matter what went wrong, she could handle it and fix it," Mila concludes. "If I have to perform with people, I prefer her to be there. This is what we do; this is like our family time."

Event Details

"Casanova"

Sun., May 19, 2 p.m.

Steinmetz Hall, Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts 445 S. Magnolia Ave., Orlando Downtown

Buy Tickets

$29-$160