Emotionality Unbound

Ballet Unbound” was a diverse mixed repertory program that landed squarely in Ohio Contemporary Ballet’s sweet spot as a company presenting classical modern dance, and neo-classical and contemporary ballet works.

Performance

Ohio Contemporary Ballet: “Ballet Unbound”

Place

Mimi Ohio Theatre at Playhouse Square, Cleveland, March 28, 2026

Words

Steve Sucato

Ohio Contemporary Ballet in “Adagio for Two Dancers” by Heinz Poll. Photograph by Susan Bestful

The nearly four-decade-old Cleveland Ohio-based troupe opened the program with Paul Taylor’s 1978 modern dance masterwork, “Airs.” Set to various orchestral works by George Frideric Handel, the 25-minute piece performed by four women and three men conjured up images of air and water currents. A work steeped in Taylor’s signature athletic, fluid movement style, OCB’s dancers acquitted themselves nicely in the style, harnessing their speed and agility to bring an effervescence to Taylor’s rapid-paced choreography, as well as quiet control to its slower passages meant to appear as if they were moving through liquid.

Standout performances came from a sprightly Katherine Chang, who darted about the stage with energy, Kia Jimmy and Joseph Dang, who wowed in a lightning-fast-footwork duet, and an elegant Kelly Korfhage, who also shone magnificently in the program’s next work, Heinz Poll’s “Adagio for Two Dancers” (1973).

One of the late German choreographer's finest pas de deux, “Adagio for Two Dancers” evoked the image of a man and woman dancing under the ethereal light of a cathedral window. Set to Tomaso Albinoni’s Adagio for Strings and Organ, the statuesque Korfhage and partner Isaac Hileman executed a series of daring overhead lifts and close-quartered turns that felt reverential, loving, and filled with a sacred beauty.

Ohio Contemporary Ballet in “Airs” by Paul Taylor. Photograph by Susan Bestful

Next came the world premiere of Gordon Pierce Schmidt’s “From the Street,” danced to the piano sonata of the same name (a.k.a. “1. X. 1905.”) by Moravian composer Leoš Janáček that pianist Jiayan Sun deftly performed live. Coincidentally premiering on the same day as the latest “No Kings” protest rally, the 12-minute ballet was inspired by the music’s tragic origin story as a tribute to František Pavlík, who in 1905 was bayoneted and killed during demonstrations in support of a university in Brno in the Czech Republic, and by the recent killings of demonstrators by ICE agents in Minnesota.

“From the Street” paired the music’s heartfelt emotions with a nonlinear narrative that centered on a “Witness” character portrayed by Hileman. It conveyed both the spirited joy of standing up for a cause and the trauma when that act proves fatal. In the first section, “Foreboding” Schmidt filled the stage with unison group dancing and smaller pairings of dancers in illustrative choreography.

In the ballet’s second section, “Death,” a lingering undercurrent of turmoil and melancholy rose to the surface as Hileman and the cast were seen reacting to an unseen aggressor. The ballet culminated in the cast witnessing an unseen heinous act that stopped them in their tracks. Hileman, in apparent shock and despair, then dropped to his knees and bowed his head to end the poignant and intense ballet.

Ohio Contemporary Ballet in “Opaque” by Nycole Ray. Photograph by Susan Bestful

The program’s closing work, “Opaque” (2015), drew on choreographer Nycole Ray’s feelings of exclusion and a lack of communication and transparency in the workplace. The 20-minute modern dance work, set to Max Richter's music, featured long black skirts in various sizes as integral choreographic and scenic elements. Their first use was in the opening ensemble dance, in which the dancers’ floor-length skirts made it look as if they were skittering across the stage on air. The cast of eleven at times balled up portions of their skirts to duck their heads behind as if to hide, while at other times, they tugged at one another’s skirts to restrict their movement.

Symbolism abounded as that idea of movement restriction continued in a duet featuring dancers Zachary Tuazon and Tehya West. Wrapped in even larger skirts, each dancer appeared from an opposite front stage wing and crept slowly toward the other, desperately reaching for one another. Tethered to their respective wings by the long fabric of skirts that trailed tautly behind them, the pair barely touched fingertips at center stage, only to be pulled backward the way they came.

A brand-new section created for long-limbed OCB dancer Julianna Marx followed. The graceful and pliant Marx at the center of a stage-filling black skirt pitched and swayed in place as the skirt was manipulated from the wings, rippling and billowing around her. The effect was angelic, and representative of a unifying force in a work filled with imagery of separation.

Well-crafted and visually gorgeous, “Opaque” proved a brilliant ending to OCB’s thought-provoking and entertaining dance program.

Steve Sucato

Steve Sucato is a former dancer turned arts writer/critic living in Cleveland, Ohio. His writing credits include articles and reviews on dance and the arts for The Plain Dealer, Buffalo News, Erie Times-News, Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance International, and web publications Critical Dance, DanceTabs (London), and Fjord Review. Steve is chairman emeritus of the Dance Critics Association and the creator of the arts website artsair.art.

comments

Featured

REVIEWS | Steve Sucato