[NEohioPAL] PRESS RELEASE: Picnic in the Park with Verb Ballets!

[Dan Kilbane]

For Immediate Release
Contacts:
At Verb Ballets:                                                 For Media:  
Margaret Carlson                                               Dan Kilbane
216.397.3757, ext. 3                                          216.513.3654
mcarlson at verbballets.org                                 kilbanedan at yahoo.com
www.verbballets.org
       
Verb Ballets:  Picnic in the Park!
A Return to Cain Park
to Include The World Premiere of a Feisty Ballroom Piece! 
August 7, 2009
 
July 17, 2009 -- Cleveland, OH -- Verb Ballets, Cleveland’s National Repertory Dance Company, returns to Cain Park for the seventh consecutive year, at the beginning of the company’s eighth season.  On Friday, August 7, 2009, Verb Ballets will perform under the stars in the beautiful Evans Amphitheatre, as part of Cain Park’s 71stseason.  The Board of Trustees and Chief Executive and Artistic Officer Dr. Margaret Carlson are pleased to announce one world premiere, two company premieres, and the return of a striking piece by Heinz Poll.  After recent auditions, the company consists of ten dancers and three interns.  
 
Dance Magazine, in 2004, named Verb one of “25 to Watch,” and in February 2008 bestowed more kudos on the company by naming Verb Ballets one of 5 “Great Tiny Troupes” in America.  Advanced reserved seats are $20, $18, and $16; day of show tickets are $23, $21, and $19, and are available by calling 216.371.3000 (Cain Park), 1.800.745.3000 (Ticketmaster), www.cainpark.com, www.ticketmaster.com, the Cain Park box office, or all area Ticketmaster outlets.
 
The repertory for the Cain Park performance includes the following:
 
Lady Be Good.  World Premiere.  Choreographer and champion ballroom dancer Gary Piece sets a feisty ballroom piece on the Verb Ballets company set to the music of George Gershwin.  Ballroom dance popularity has soared in the last several years, thanks to the TV reality competition series “Dancing With the Stars,” and here Verb Ballets brings their special take on the phenomenon.  
 
Urban Study.  Company Premiere.  Choreographer Ginger Thatcher, currently in charge of restaging the works of Lars Lubovitch and a former company member of Cleveland San Jose Ballet, returns to Cleveland with her classical ballet piece, which had its world premiere at Oregon Ballet Theatre in 2002. 
 
Elegaic Song.  Revival.  (1968) Ohio Ballet Founder Heinz Poll’s timely piece for eight dancers is dedicated to the innocent victims of war.  “Elegiac Song,” restaged by former Ohio Ballet company member Jane Startzman, was the first work Heinz Poll created in Northeast Ohio, and was rooted in the choreographer’s memories of wartime Germany. The imagery of grieving women is inspired by Käthe Kollwitz’s drawings. The haunting music by Shostakovich evokes an aura of sorrow and fear. The movement vocabulary, indebted to Martha Graham, is tailored to the abilities of eight teenage girls who took Poll’s intensive ballet workshop at the University of Akron. The premiere performance in 1968 marked the debut of the Chamber Ballet, the jewel-like little company that was later renamed Ohio Ballet. The premiere was lighted by Thomas Skelton, the world-renowned lighting designer who served as the associate director until his death in 1994.  For this
 performance, the lighting design is by Trad A Burns.
 
Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux.  Company Premiere.  Presented in partnership with Neos Dance Theatre by permission of The George Balanchine Trust, this Balanchine duet will bring an elegant detail to the evening at Cain Park.  The restaging of this work will be by Judith Fugate. 
 
The Verb Ballets company includes Danielle Brickman, Ashley Cohen, Erin Conway Lewis, Antonio Deberry*,
Leisa DeCarlo*, Antwon Duncan, Katie Gnagy, Sunita Joshi*, Gary Lenington, Catherine Meredith Lambert, Jennifer Moll, Brian Murphy, and Juriys Safonovs {* intern}
 
Cain Park’s Evans Amphitheater and box office are located at Goodnor & Superior Avenues in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.  The Park’s west entrance is at Lee Road & Superior; the east entrance is at Goodnor & Superior.  Advanced reserved seats are $20, $18, and $16; day of show tickets are $23, $21, and $19, and are available by calling 216.371.3000 (Cain Park), 1.800.745.3000 (Ticketmaster), www.cainpark.com, www.ticketmaster.com, the Cain Park box office, or all area Ticketmaster outlets.
 
Major sponsors of Verb Ballets include AHS Foundation, The Bascom Little Fund, Millie L. Carlson, Change For Charity, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, The Cleveland Foundation, The George Gund Foundation, Kulas Foundation, The Laub Foundation, Lubrizol Foundation, The McGregor Foundation, John P. Murphy Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Ohio Arts Council. Additional individual sponsors
include Chuck and Ann Ennis, Norma and Jeffrey Glazer, David R. Pierce, Alan Miles Ruben, Robert M. Shwab.
 
Additional sponsors include Baumgarten & Company, LLP; Cedar Hill Communications; FITWORKS; GlobeNewswire, Inc.; WCLV and WCPN, and Wireless Village, and Citadel Communications.
 
Verb Ballets is now beginning its eighth season under the leadership of Chief Executive and Artistic Officer Dr. Margaret Carlson, an energetic staff and its dedicated Board of Trustees, who have established Verb Ballets as Cleveland’s premiere dance repertory company. Verb Ballets was named one of “25 to Watch in 2004” by Dance Magazine, the country’s leading news magazine covering dance, and recently the magazine bestowed more kudos on the company by naming Verb one of 5 “Great Tiny Troupes” in America. Verb Ballets discovers, collects, interprets and stages choreography that matters to the region and to the world of dance.  As a curator of expressive movement that is globally connected and nationally respected, Verb Ballets has a mandate to support and foster emerging talent, present excellence in contemporary choreographers and revive and honor modern dance classics. 
 
Cain Park is a summer performing art park owned and operated by the City of Cleveland Heights.  No ordinary city park, Cain Park begins where most leave off: an outdoor, intimate, covered theater similar to a mid-sized off-Broadway space (Alma Theater); an outdoor covered amphitheater (Evans Amphitheater); an air-conditioned art gallery (Audrey & Harvey Feinberg Art Gallery), and outstanding programming that includes professional theatrical productions, a nationally recognized Arts Festival, cabaret series, professional dance companies, children's programming, and concerts featuring national, regional, and local performers, surrounded by 22 acres of bicycle and jogging paths, tennis and basketball courts, a wading pool, playground, skate park, and picnic areas.
 
Biographies
George Balanchine (1904 – 1983) (Choreographer), born Giorgi Melitonis dze Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to Georgian parents, was one of the 20th century’s foremost choreographers, a pioneer of ballet in the United States, co-founder and balletmaster of New York City Ballet: his work created modern ballet, based on his deep knowledge of classical forms and techniques.  He was a choreographer known for his musicality; he did not illustrate music but expressed it in dance and worked extensively with Igor Stravinsky, his contemporary.  Balanchine’s 1954 staging of The Nutcracker, performed every year in New York City during the Christmas season, has made the ballet a Christmas tradition in the United States, and a money-making tradition for most of the companies that perform it.  In 1978, the first year of the new national award, George Balanchine received the Kennedy Center Honors Award.
 
Gary Pierce (Choreographer) A former U.S. Ballroom Champion, Mr. Pierce co-founded and performed with the American Ballroom Theatre Company, New York City. For over 10 years he served as resident choreographer for the company. He has performed all over the world in dance companies and as a guest artist in festivals and special arts events for television and the stage. As a choreographer, Mr. Pierce has created over three hundred shows, revues, and industrials. Artistically, his work has been acclaimed by the New York Times, the Village Voice, and the New York Post, as well as many other publications. Mr. Pierce has directed and choreographed shows for many dance organizations from symphony orchestras to the New York Knicks cheerleaders. From ballet to ballroom, tap to tango, salsa to swing, he is at home in any dance medium. 
 
Heinz Poll (Choreographer) was born in Oberhausen, Germany, in 1926, Poll was a champion ice skater before he became a dancer. His experience on the rinks imbued him with a love of speed that he expressed in his athletic baroque ballet, Cascade (1985). After World War II, he studied dance at Joss’s Folkwang School in Essen, began his professional career at the Municipal Theatre in Goettingen and became a principal dancer with the Berlin State Opera Ballet.  In 1951, he joined the National Ballet of Chile as a dancer, ballet master, and teacher. The company’s tradition of bringing serious programs to indigenous people in remote mountain villages served as the model for Ohio Ballet’s Summer Festival of free outdoor performances. In 1962, Poll joined Ballet de Jeunesse Musicales de France as ballet master. Two years later, he came to the United States as a guest artist with the Chilean company. He performed in the American Dance Festival the
 following summer and stayed in New York to teach at Thalia Mara’s National Academy of Ballet. In Akron, he developed Ohio Ballet into one of America’s most polished, respected, and widely traveled chamber dance troupes. Poll was awarded the Association of Ohio Dance Companies Award in 1983, the Cleveland Arts Prize in 1995, and the Ohio Arts Council’s Governor’s Award in 1999. After his retirement, he wrote his memoir and has conferred a number of his ballets to former Ohio Ballet dancers.
 
Ginger Thatcher (Choreographer) has been Rehearsal Director for Complexions Dance Co. with Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Co. and American Ballet Theatre while setting the full length ballet Othello.   She has also been Rehearsal Director for six Broadway shows including Matthew Bourne’s acclaimed production of Swan Lake.  She has most recently choreographed & directed a production of Oklahoma, a new version of Swing for Maine State Music Theatre, choreographed Wild Women of Planet Wongo, for the NYMF festival, Sheldon Harnick’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, for Two River Theatre Co, the film Far From Heaven, with Todd Haines, and Maury Yeston’s new musical, Hans Christian Anderson, for Maine State Music Theatre.  She was recently guest lecturer/ choreographer for Oakland University and University of Michigan this last year.  Other NY credits include: Syncopation, Stamford Theatre Works, Big, Gateway Playhouse, The
 Lucky Chance, Jean Cocteau Rep., NYC, The Winter’s Tale, Othello, NYC Shakespeare Project, Barrio Babies, Amas Theatre Group NYC , and TV’s As The World Turns.  Regional Credits: The Robber Bridegroom, Cleveland Play House, Hamlet, The Cherry Orchard, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, Don Pasquale, Cleveland Opera, Eugene Onegin, The Bartered Bride, Glimmergalss Opera.  She has created works for: Oregon Ballet Theatre, Louisville Ballet, Sarasota Ballet, (Triple Circle Choreography Award), Minnesota Ballet, American Repertory Ballet, and Fugate/Bahiri Ballet NY at the Joyce Theater in NYC.  Broadway Credits, as Assoc., Asst., and Resident Choreographer include: The Red Shoes, Carousel, Big, Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, Oklahoma, A Year with Frog and Toad.  Other Credits: PBS Othello, San Francisco Ballet, ABT, The Red Shoes, ABT, National Ballet of Canada, A Brahms Symphony, ABT, and Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, Berlin, all with Lar Lubovitch,
 “But Not for Me,” Martha Graham Dance Co., with Susan Stroman. 
 
Dr. Margaret Carlson (Chief Executive & Artistic Officer)  has international expertise in performing, teaching, choreographing, and working in a variety of settings. Dr. Carlson was an original member of the Cleveland Ballet, serving as a Principal dancer from 1972-1983. Also a member of Actors Equity, she performed in numerous musical theatre tours throughout the 1970's, including Sweet Charity, Ballroom, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Brigadoon, Mame, Hello Dolly! and The Merry Widow. For many years, she choreographed for the Cleveland Opera. Dr. Carlson served as Director of the School of Dance at the University of Akron from 1985-1993. In 1993, she became Dean of the School of Dance at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, until she returned to Cleveland in 1999. She then served as the Development and Education Director for the Cleveland San Jose Ballet. She consulted both nationally and locally through her company, Carlson
 Consulting Group, Inc., with groups that have included The American Dance Guild, Chinese Performing Artists of America, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Ohio Ballet, Dancing Wheels, Ohio Youth Ballet, Ohio Conservatory of Dance, Tom and Susana Evert Dance Theatre, and White Cloud Studios. Dr. Carlson founded the American Alliance of Dance Artists and served as its first President. She has served as a Board member and officer for Kids on Broadway, DANCECleveland, the Cleveland Ballet Council, the American Dance Guild, the Council of Dance Administrators, the Hong Kong Ballet, the Hong Kong Dance Company and The Hong Kong Jockey Club Music and Dance Fund. She served as the secretary of the International Organization for Transition for Professional Dancers, a sub-committee of UNESCO, based in Switzerland from 1998-2006, and is Treasurer and current Board member of the American Dance Guild in NYC and was its vice-president for 10 years.  She is known
 for her work as the regisseur for the works of Ian (Ernie) Horvath. She received her doctorate from Durham University in the United Kingdom.
 
Robert Wesner, (Guest Artist courtesy of Neos Dance Theatre)  a native of Ohio, trained at Opus II Dance Studio, School of Cleveland Ballet, School of Ballet Arizona, and the School of Milwaukee Ballet. Robert is the founder/artistic director of Neos Dance Theatre, a classically trained touring company. Robert enjoyed a six year stay with Ballet Arizona under the direction of both Michael Uthoff and Ib Anderson. During that time Robert danced many masterpieces of our time. Some of that work includes the “Profiteer” in Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table; “Tico” in Paul Taylor's Company B; “Iago” in Jose Limon's The Moore's Pavane; “Tybalt” in Romeo and Juliet; the “Jester” in Earnst Uthoff's Carmina Burana, and company work in pieces by George Balanchine and Antony Tudor. Contemporary dance credits include works by Dwight Rhoden, Kevin O'Day, Pilobolus, Danny Ezralow, Moses Pendleton, and David Parsons. Robert has choreographed works
 commissioned by the Ashland University Theatre Department, Belhaven College, Ballet Arizona, Verb Ballets, Dancing Wheels, Richland Performing Arts, and Ashland Regional Ballet. Robert assisted Moses Pendleton in the choreography of MOMIX’s Opus Cactus and Discman. He choreographed for Phoenix Symphony Orchestra’s Pops Concerts for eight years and now choreographs Pops Concerts for symphonies all over the country. Robert and his wife Brooke are the parents of three children, Genevieve, Ella, and Mekah. Robert first performed with Verb Ballets in August, 2003.
 
New company members
 
Antwon Duncan received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Akron.  He has performed with Ohio Ballet, Nadeen O’Connor Dance Theatre, Living Fountain Dance Company and The University of Akron Dance Company.  As a member of Cleveland Contemporary Dance Theater from 2005 – 2007 he performed in such works at “Church of Nations” by Kevin Iega Jeff, “To Have and to Hold” by Shapiro and Smith and “Dear Adnil” by Linda Kahn.  This is Antwon’s debut season with Verb Ballets.  
 
Gary Lenington. A native of Akron, Ohio, he began his dance training with Nan Klinger and the Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet and studied extensively with Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux at the Chautauqua Institute.  Since turning professional in 1993, he has appeared in a number of soloist and principal roles for both the Richmond Ballet and Ballet Florida including “Romeo”, “Sugar Plum Cavalier” and “Snow Pas de Deux”, “Lambarena”, “The Moor’s Pavane”, “Elemental Brubeck”, “...Smile With My Heart”, “Lady of the Camiellas”, “A Midsummers Night Dream”, “Carmina Burana”, and Peter Martins' “Barber Violin Concerto”.  As a member of Ballet Florida, he appeared twice at the “Le Temps D'Aimer” international dance festival held in Biarritz, France: in 1999 as the soloist in Danny Ezralows' high energy production, “Spark”, and again in 2001 as the principal in Thierry Malandain's production of  “The Stone Flower”;
 he also had the privilege of performing at Ballet Florida's debut at the Joyce Theatre (NYC), where he received rave reviews in Ezralows’ “Read My Hips”.  He attributes the longevity of his career to his versatility as both a modern and classical dancer and is thankful to have had the privilege of working with many influential teachers and choreographers in the dance world today.  This is his first season with Verb Ballets.
 
Jennifer Moll Safonovs.  A native of Stow, Ohio, Jennifer started dancing at the age of 6 and trained with Christine Jones Meneer for 12 years.  She was an original member of Meneer’s pre-professional company Children’s Ballet Theatre and danced leading roles in several ballets.  Ms. Moll Safonovs graduated from Indiana University with Bachelors degrees in Classical Ballet performance and Psychology.  While at IU, Jennifer was trained and coached by Violette Verdy, Jacques Cesbron, John Meehan, Susan Pilarre, Mark Godden, and John Clifford.  She performed principal roles in George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, Serenade, and Stars and Stripes, as well as in several original works by Verdy, Cesbron, and Godden.  Jennifer danced with Virginia Ballet Theatre for two years, where she also taught ballet and Pilates at Old Dominion University.  She has also danced for Ballet Theatre of Ohio, and has been a guest performer and teacher with
 ballet schools across the country.   Ms. Moll Safonovs debuted with Verb in January of 2008.
 
Jurijs Safonovs (Guest Artist courtesy of Neos Dance Theatre) is a native of Riga, Latvia. At the age of 10, Jurijs joined the Riga Choreographic Ballet School. After graduating in 1996, Jurijs began his professional ballet career with the Latvian National Ballet Theatre, where he performed as a soloist. In 2001, Mr. Safonovs came to the United States, where he continued dancing and became a principal dancer with Virginia Ballet Theatre. Since beginning his U.S. career, Jurijs has been a guest artist and instructor with many different ballet companies nationwide.  Dancing has taken Mr. Safonovs to several countries worldwide, including England, Germany, Spain, France, Holland, China and Russia. He has most recently served as Ballet Master for Ballet Theatre of Ohio (Akron, OH), and Interim Artistic Director of the Virginia Ballet Theatre.  This is his first season as a guest artist for Verb Ballets.
 
Antonio DeBerry (Verb CLICKS Intern) is 19 years old.  He began dancing at the age of 17 under the direction of Terence Greene.  His premier performance under Greene was in the production of  “Movement of Spirit and Soul.”  From there he joined the All City Dance Ensemble under the direction of Michael Medcalf.  This summer season is his debut with Verb Ballets.
 
Leisa DeCarlo (Verb CLICKS Intern). Born and raised in Brunswick, Leisa has been dancing at the Cleveland Dance Academy since age 3.  She has participated in numerous performances, such as The Nutcracker and Hiawatha, and participated in the Youth America Grand Prix in Chicago.  Leisa has been a Verb CLICKS intern with Verb Ballets since the spring of 2008.
 Sunita Joshi (Verb CLICKS Intern) began training at the age of six in Munroe Falls.  Throughout her studies she performed many lead roles including “Snow Queen,” “Fairy Godmother,” and “Lilac Fairy.”  She also performed in Heinz Poll’s “Adagio for Two Dancers.”  Sunita has trained at Krystie’s Dance Academy and on scholarship at Ballet Met Columbus.  She also trained with Eric Carvill & Bill and Susannah Gentes of Lockport City Ballet.  This is Sunita’s debut season with Verb Ballets.


      
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