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Here's a look at all four troupes
By Elaine Guregian
Beacon Journal arts and culture critic
Published on Thursday, Jul 17, 2008
At the second annual Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival, just one dance by the late choreographer/artistic founder of Akron's Ohio Ballet will be performed.
And that's OK.
Dance is always changing. Making the festival only a museum for Poll's work wouldn't be smart, or especially interesting. Bringing back a dance here and there will help us appreciate Poll's work more than steady repetition would.
In the meantime, festival director Jane Startzman, a former Ohio Ballet dancer and administrator, has chosen Company C Contemporary Ballet, a 13-member company from the San Francisco Bay area, to lead off this year's festival of four weekends of free outdoor dance sponsored by the city of Akron.
The festival begins with Company C at 8:45 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Goodyear Heights Metro Park.
Of all the groups Startzman considered, what sold her on Company C?
''Their repertoire is what got me. They do [David] Parsons; they do [Twyla] Tharp. They're like what Ohio Ballet used to be. What I wanted was a company that was balanced— that did some pointe and some modern,'' Startzman said. ''I walked into [deputy Mayor] David Lieberth's office and said, 'This company in California might be good.' ''
Startzman and Neil Sapienza, director of the University of Akron's School of Dance, Theatre and Arts Administration, made the final selection.
The city and Mayor Don Plusquellic began the festival after the demise of the Ohio Ballet, which gave its last performances at its Summer Festival in 2006. Last year, Startzman invited the Columbus company BalletMet to join three Northeast Ohio companies for the festival.
Dancer homecoming
Artistic director Charles Anderson, who formerly danced with the New York City Ballet, founded Company C in 2002. His group performs at its East Bay home of Walnut Creek, as well as in the greater Bay area and on tour.
This will be Anderson's first trip to Ohio with the company, he said in a conversation from California.
His initial stop will be with two of his dancers to give a lecture/demonstration at 11:30 a.m. today at the University of Akron Center for Dance and Theatre at Guzzetta Hall. (For event information, call 330-972-7948 or e-mail dance@uakron.edu.)
One of the dancers will be Akron native Kate Lieberth, 28, (daughter of David Lieberth), who graduated from Our Lady of the Elms High School, trained at the UA Dance Institute and danced in the Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet. Lieberth and dancer Alex Lytton will perform.
Anderson will also talk about his life in dance, as shaped by his parents and stepfather, all professional dancers and teachers.
Anderson said firsthand work experience with choreographer Jerome Robbins at the New York City Ballet shaped Anderson as a young man.
''At times we would work for three hours on where our eyes were supposed to be looking during the piece. At the time, when I was younger, I thought, 'My God, this is crazy,' '' Anderson admitted.
But he came to see Robbins' wisdom.
''I don't know if he learned that from Broadway or whatever, but I realized from him how to focus attention. You know, you can really change what the audience is seeing with simple things they don't know are going on, like having (dancers') eyes all looking toward the principal (dancer).''
Another shaping influence on Anderson was George Balanchine. Although Anderson never worked with City Ballet's co-founder, he did dance Balanchine's repertoire, which remains the backbone of the company. The difference between performing a Robbins dance and a Balanchine dance stayed with Anderson.
''With the Jerry Robbins ballets, they're all very human. You feel like he has created another world and you are existing in this other world. In Balanchine ballets, you feel like you're a cog in a perfectly timed clock, ticking away exactly correctly. It's two very different feelings,'' Anderson said.
For Company C's programs in the Akron festival, Anderson said, ''I wasn't sure what to expect, so I tried to bring an eclectic mix and nothing that would be so challenging that it was hard to get into it.''
Here are Anderson's comments about the dances his company will perform at Goodyear Heights Metro Park:
• Through Company C, Anderson has forged a performing relationship with modern dance choreographer Twyla Tharp. When he discovered a videotape of Armenia, a piece that she had made at the time of Movin' Out, her Broadway hit with Billy Joel, he jumped at the chance to perform it.
The music, settings of Armenian folk music by Komitas Vartabed — a legend in the small country nestled between Turkey and Iran — ''is really cool,'' Anderson said. The dance is balletic, but Tharp ''makes little twists and quirks and changes that make it more interesting.''
• Michael Smuin danced in American Ballet Theatre at the same time as Anderson's parents, David Anderson and Zola Dishong. At the time, Smuin was artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, Anderson's stepfather, Richard Cammack, headed its affiliated school. So, there was a long, familial relationship before Smuin's death. Anderson calls Smuin's Starshadows the most classical piece in the program.
• In a similar updated classical vein, Bolero, Anderson's version of Ravel's famous score, is danced on pointe, ''with some modern twists.''
• Also in the program: Vespers, set by former Paul Taylor company dancer David Grenke to Tom Waits' version of Waltzing Matilda, and the David Parsons staple, The Envelope, a slyly comic work that the Parsons company performed two years ago at UA's E.J. Thomas Hall.
''Obviously, it's David Parsons' masterwork, always funny. One of the special things about that is, you don't always laugh when you go to the ballet. You're going to laugh when you see The Envelope,'' Anderson predicted.
''I don't know why it is so difficult to get humor into dance, but . . . I'm always on the lookout.''
The other dancers
The three other companies in the Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival have Northeast Ohio homes. Here's a look at what's new with them, and what they'll be doing for their shows:
Verb Ballets
Verb, based in Cleveland, is entering its seventh season. Company members Danielle Brickman, Ashley Cohen, Erin Conway, Katie Gnagy, Sydney Ignacio, Catherine Meredith, Jennifer Moll, Brian Murphy, Anna Roberts and Robert Wesner are joined by intern Alyssa Marquez.
Verb will appear at Hardesty Park during the Akron Arts Expo, July 25 and 26. In those programs, Mondo Jumbo, choreographed by artistic director Hernando Cortez, will receive its world premiere. It's promised to be in the mode of Cortez's Planet Soup, which stirred the pot with world music of many flavors.
Ski-Du is Cortez's take on the jokey Skiva (think skis and unitards), which Moses Pendleton created for Pilobolus. Another Cortez work is Frontrow, which mixes recorded music by New York composer David Lang with music by Cleveland State composer Eric Ziolek.
The final piece in the program is Heinz Poll's Andante Sostenuto, restaged by former Ohio Ballet dancer and ballet master Richard Dickinson, with costumes re-created by Janet Bolick.
Ballet Theatre of Ohio
Christine Meneer's company got its start as Children's Ballet Theatre. It featured young dancers from her own Munroe Falls studio and adult guests. After the Ohio Ballet went under, Meneer — an early member of Poll's Ohio Ballet group — put a small group of adult dancers on staff to create a professional company, Ballet Theatre of Ohio.
Meneer has added extensively to her cast for this summer show, with 10 professional company members (Natalie Alexiou, Andrea Blankstein, Megan Coleman, Meghan Dietz, Katie Edmonds, Eryn Hanes, Lindsay Mulhollen, Taylor Prusa, Bernie Richards and Bridgitt Staudt), three guest artists (Eric Carvill, Damien Highfield and Devin Kline) and one trainee (Anginette Fullerton).
The company will perform selections from Meneer's version of Romeo and Juliet. Carvill, a dancer in the company (and former Ohio Ballet member) choreographed the dance I Had the Same Dream, set to music by Papadosio. The dance premiered in February at the Akron Civic Theatre, as did Swingity, set by Richard Early to music of Count Basie and others.
A classical pas de deux from Marius Petipa's ballet Don Quixote completes the show.
While the other three companies at the festival are using the University of Akron Dance Institute to present a pre-concert program, one hour before each show, Meneer will run her own interactive children's movement workshop at her company's Firestone Park shows.
GroundWorks Dance theatre
GroundWorks has distinguished itself by placing dance in settings that are architecturally significant or just plain cool. Festival director Startzman has organized other events in Glendale Cemetery and found a receptive audience. When she and Deputy Mayor Lieberth suggested it for the GroundWorks shows, artistic director David Shimotakahara agreed. The group will perform at Glendale Cemetery on Aug. 8 and 9.
Former GroundWorks dancer Mark Otloski is making a transition away from dancing, so in May, GroundWorks hired a successor to that excellent dancer. Kelly Brunk, who recently graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, is the newest company member. The Summer Festival will mark his first Akron shows.
Shimotakahara said it's astonishing to realize that he is twice the age of his two newest dancers, Brunk and Sarah Perrett, who joined Shimotakahara and other company members Felise Bagley, Damien Highfield and Amy Miller. (As it turns out, the four earlier members are all former members of Heinz Poll's Ohio Ballet.)
The percussionist/composer Gustavo Aguilar will perform with saxophonist Howie Smith and pianist Nathan Douds for the Akron premiere of Lights Up. The musicians will also take the stage by themselves.
Shimotakahara said that watching KT Niehoff's Proximal, ''you feel like you're eavesdropping on somebody's conversation.'' This dance is performed without music, with minimal lighting.
At last year's Summer Festival, BalletMet performed a duet the company had commissioned from Shimotakahara. This summer, Highfield and Bagley will dance their version of the work, titled Sweet.
Finally, the company will return to New York choreographer David Parker's personal look at Annie Get Your Gun, remade as Annie Redux. It's Parker who has paved the way for GroundWorks' upcoming debut March 5-8 at the West End Theatre on New York City's Upper West Side.
Well before the New York visit, GroundWorks will make its annual appearance at Akron's Ice House in September. More on that later. Right now, it's time to head outside to watch some dance.
Elaine Guregian can be reached at 330-996-3574 or eguregian@thebeaconjournal.com.
At the second annual Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival, just one dance by the late choreographer/artistic founder of Akron's Ohio Ballet will be performed.
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