Akron Hosts 5^th Annual Heinz Poll Dance Festival

Sunday Symphonies Extend Weekend Arts Experience

The City of Akron will continue its 37 year tradition of presenting free dance performances in the parks during the summer and honoring the legacy of the founding artistic director of Ohio Ballet, Heinz Poll.

New for the 2011 season are classic works by regional companies choreographed by Poll himself, plus a new work set to the music of Akron’s own rock legend Chrissie Hynde and the addition of Akron Symphony Orchestra concerts on dance weekends.

This marks the 5^th consecutive year that the City has sponsored "The Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival" - - four weekends of ballet featuring four high caliber, professional dance companies. The programs will be presented July 22 - August 13, and begin at 8:45pm on Friday and Saturday evenings, with a children’s program starting at 7:45pm each night presented by the University of Akron Dance Institute. The dates, the companies, and the locations:

July 22 & 23 Hardesty Park Dayton Contemporary Dance Company

July 29 & 30 Firestone Park Verb Ballets

August 5 & 6 Glendale Cemetery Groundworks Dancetheater

August 12 & 13 Goodyear Metropark Neos Dance Theatre

Dance Stage to be Shared With Akron Symphony on Sundays

The City of Akron, with support from local foundations, will extend the use of its weekend dance stage to Sunday nights this summer, for a series of four concerts by the Akron Symphony Orchestra. Performances under the direction of Christopher Wilkins will be:

July 24 Hardesty Park

July 31 Firestone Park

August 7 Glendale Cemetery

August 14 Goodyear Metropark

The summer program of concert music will include varied selections from Vaughan Williams, Scott Joplin, John Phillip Sousa, and Broadway tunes from Sound of Music and West Side Story. All Sunday Symphonies began at 7:30 pm. Admission is free.

Dayton Company Celebrates African-American Experience

Dayton Contemporary Dance Company is making its second trip to the Akron festival (having appeared last in 2009) and holds the largest repertoire of classic works by African-American choreographers in the world.

The Hardesty Park program on July 22 and 23 include "Sets & Chasers," with choreography by Kevin Ward - a ballet set to a recording of the Duke Ellington orchestra, recorded live in 1940. The title refers to the sequences of numbers that jazz musicians separate an evening’s performance into (sets) and the breaks (chasers) that signal the end of a set.

Also on the program is "Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder," choreographed by Donald McKayle with traditional music arranged by Robert DeCormier and Milton Okun. The dance recalls the prison chain gangs working along rural roads in the South. A woman appears in their dreams, as a sweetheart, mother, or wife, and the dance mirrors the lost hopes and frustrations of the men on the chain gang. The reconstruction of this work is part of the "Black Tradition in American Modern Dance"- a project of the American Dance Festival supported by the Ford Foundation.

"Children of the Passage" was also choreographed by McKayle with Ronald K. Brown. Set to the vibrant rhythms of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, it follows a party of decadent lost souls. A cadence is drawn from the traditional marching jazz bands of New Orleans with the grind and groove of contemporary jazz and soul music. This project commission was made possible by the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Dayton Foundation.

Verb Ballets

On July 29 and 30, Verb Ballets performs at Firestone Park. The Cleveland-based company featuring many Akron-based dancers will be performing Heinz Poll's "Songs Without Words," a ballet given by the choreographer to long-time Ohio Ballet accompanist David Fisher and to Jane Startzman, the director of the Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival who danced with Ohio Ballet from 1969 to 1989 and later served for 10 years as artistic administrator and company manager for Ohio Ballet. Fisher will be accompanying the VERB dancers live.

Other elements of the Verb program are to be announced at a later date.

The company will also host a lecture-demonstration at the Jewish Community Center on Wednesday, July 27 at 7:00 pm., free admission, and open to the public. Startzman will speak about Heinz Poll and his creative process on the piece.

GroundWorks DanceTheater

GroundWorks DanceTheater returns to Akron’s Glendale Cemetery on August 5 and 6 to present the Akron premiere of "Hindsight" an exciting new multi- media work by internationally acclaimed director/choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett and video projection designer Adam Larsen, set to the music of Akron’s own rock legend Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, with costumes by former Cleveland San Jose Ballet dancer Victoria Mearini.

The project continues the 13-year-old company’s mission of partnering with nationally and internationally renowned artists in the creation of new dance that engages and enlivens the community.

The setting is more than appropriate for the Akron hall-of-famer’s piece of music to premiere as a dance work. When Hynde opened her VegiTerranean Restaurant at Northside in 2007, she announced that among her favorites places in her hometown was Glendale, the 172 year old Rural Cemetery on West Exchange Street..

The program will also include two works by Artistic Director David Shimotakahara: "Boom Boom," a tribute to the American Blues, and "Kabila (Tribe)" set to the music of contemporary African vocalists .

"Hindsight" was commissioned with support from the Chuck and Charlotte Fowler New Works Fund, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Cleveland Foundation and the Kulas Foundation.

Neos Dance Theatre

Neos Dance Theatre will perform two different programs on August 12 and 13 at Goodyear Heights Metropolitan Park, which should encourage audiences to see both evening performances.

The Heinz Poll work Schubert Waltzes, newly acquired by Neos, was another work given by the choreographer to David Fisher, and he will accompany this work both evenings. Schubert Waltzes is a playful ballet set with three couples. Former Ohio Ballet dancers Judy Shoaff-Reading and Luc Vanier restaged the work during a two week rehearsal period this summer.

Two other works by Poll will be featured during the weekend: Summer Night and selections of Eight by Benny Goodman.

Also on the program will be Joseph Morrissey’s contemporary en pointe ballet with five dancers Mein Weg (meaning "My Way" in German).

The program includes Lickety-Split by Alejandro Cerrudo, resident choreographer of the esteemed Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Neos Dance Theatre is the only company in the U.S. to perform this groundbreaking work. With a cast of six dancers, the piece reflects a quirky and unique style that Cerrudo’s work has been recognized for around the globe.

Additional works to be presented will be Artistic Director Robert Wesner’s original "Appalachian Spring" recently commissioned by the Mansfield Symphony Orchestra, and the world première of another original work by Wesner - to Bach’s Verschiedene Canones.

Collaboration with the Joffrey at Blossom

The Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival also offers a bonus performance in collaboration with The Cleveland Orchestra and The Joffrey Ballet at the Blossom Festival, August 20-21 at 8pm. For ticket information, go to www.clevelandorchestra.com

Master Classes, Demonstrations Round Out Festival Line-up

Master classes for advanced and pre-professional students will be conducted by each performing company every Saturday at 11:00am, in the Guzetta studios at a cost of $10/student. For more information about master classes, call 330.972.7948 or contact dance@uakron.edu.

Summa Sports Medicine Specialists will be conducting a workshop on dancer injured, treatment and how they differ from the norm on August 3 at 7 pm. Debra Force (former dancer with Ohio Ballet) is now a physical therapist with them and she will be a part of the team.

Neos Dance Theatre will be conducting a Liturgical Dance workshop at Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church on August 9 at 7 pm, satisfying one mission of the dance festival - to reach into the heart of the neighborhood where Neos will be performing .

Dayton Contemporary Dance Company will be doing a master class on Thursday, July 21 from 1 - 2:30 pm for YEPAW teen arts camp and for the City of Akron's Summer Arts Experience teens (the dance component of that camp).

VERB’s lecture-demonstration on the Heinz Poll works will be at the Jewish Community Center, Wednesday, July 27 at 7:00 pm., free and open to the public, with comments by Jane Startzman.

Festival History

Initiated by Mayor Don Plusquellic, the Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival started in 2007 in response to the demise of Ohio Ballet, which gave its final performance August 6, 2006 at Goodyear Metropolitan Park. A committee of dance and education professionals, with local foundations that was convened by the Mayor examined options for continuing free outdoor summer performances that is unique among American cities and dates to 1975.

Heinz Poll

The German-born Heinz Poll came to Akron in 1967 and offered classes to promising students. In 1974, with lighting designer Thomas Skelton, he founded Akron’s first professional company, which eventually became Ohio Ballet. Poll died in April, 2006. His works are included in the summer repertoire.

"Besides creating a professional dance company of national stature and taking it to New York City for five seasons, Heinz Poll created this special summer experience," says Startzman. "Everyone told him that he was crazy, but he was accustomed to accomplishing what others thought impossible."

Sponsors

The City of Akron is providing support for the Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival and the Akron Symphony concerts. The Dance Festival receives support from the Ohio Arts Council.

This year’s dance festival is also supported by the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation, Akron Community Foundation, the GAR Foundation, and the Ohio Ballet Endowment-Akron Community Foundation, Trustee. Significant support has also come from Barbara Schubert and Friends of the Festival - individuals who have made contributions in Poll’s memory and in support of continuing the summer tradition.

Akron Symphony performances have been supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, GAR Foundation, Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation, Lehner Family Foundation, Phillip Maynard and Roger Read.