Beginning May 5, Verb Ballets will kick off the annual DanceWorks series at Cleveland Public Theatre with Fresh Inventions, which features Northeast Ohio choreographers, composers, musicians, sculptors and dancers. Artists are paired together and given finite time in the rehearsal studio, requiring them to push the bounds of their creativity and produce work incorporating multiple art forms.
Choreographers include artist-in-residence Terence Greene, Erin Conway Lewis, Antwon Duncan, Stephanie Krise and Brian Murphy along with lighting designer Trad A Burns. Composers, whose work will be performed live, include Michael Leese, Katharine O’Connell and Stephen Smith. The musicians are several of Northeast Ohio’s best and brightest: Regina Mushabec, Nicholas Underhill, Heidi Albert, Susan Britton, Jiah Chung and Laura Shuster. The performances are in collaboration with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony.
The dances in this year’s series are a range of themes and movement vocabulary: Duncan uses spoken-word instead of music to tell his story. Murphy takes a work of music, titled War Elegy, and focuses on tension in relationships; his piece is performed on pointe. Lewis, using Leese’s music, tells a romantic story. Krise is paired with a string quartet and uses a movement structure to create a gritty, urban piece. Greene’s dance, titled Calligraphy, has been created in dedication to Ernestine and Malcolm Brown, who owned the Malcolm Brown Gallery. A well-regarded business in Shaker Heights, it was the longest-running African American-owned gallery in the country.
The performances will also feature the modern dance classic Noumenon Mobilus, created by Alwin Nikolais. Known for incorporating mixed media, he conceived, choreographed, composed and created the visual art effects for all of his works.
Tickets are $10 for the Thursday, May 5 performance, and $25 for the May 6 and 7 performances. Tickets are available by calling the Cleveland Public Theatre box office at 216-631-2727 x501, or by visiting www.cptonline.org. Cleveland Public Theater is located at 6415 Detroit Avenue.
WATCH: A past DanceWorks performance by Verb Ballets
