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    • Akron Celebrates 50 Years of Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival
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    Akron Celebrates 50 Years of Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival

    Vaseline Posted on

    Akron has a lot to be proud of, as the city celebrates its 50th anniversary this summer with free professional dance performances in city parks. The performances begin July 26 at Forest Lodge Park in West Akron.

    The longstanding tradition of offering outdoor dances free of charge to the Akron community began in 1974, when German choreographer Heinz Poll’s Chamber Ballet at the University of Akron went professional.

    His company, renamed Ohio Ballet two years later, began its summer festival in 1974 at Cascade Plaza in downtown Akron, with performances on a wooden stage built from donated lumber.

    “We were actually pioneering something there. We put a wooden floor, because it had to be a little bit resilient, on trusses. And then we put a Marley (dance) floor over it,” said Jane Startzman, a former Ohio Ballet dancer and director of the Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival.

    In the early years, the lighting instruments were mounted on towers and the artists placed heating under the stage floor so that it would not get wet after sunset.

    Behind the scenes was a truck with steps to reach the loading area.

    “It was crazy, but man, it was fun,” Startzman said.

    Startzman, who began as an apprentice with Poll’s Chamber Ballet students in 1969, said the company performed in at least three Akron parks during the Ohio Ballet’s time. Over the years, the park performances expanded to communities including Hudson, Warren, Youngstown, Wooster, Ashtabula and Medina.

    See performances: Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival celebrates 50th anniversary

    In 2003, the parks’ dance stage went much more high-tech, created by a rented Transformer-style semi-trailer truck called Mr. Stage. The sides slide up and out to form the roof, and the floor can be pulled down, creating a 40-square-foot stage.

    A stage canopy provides better protection for the dancers from the rain and the lighting on the stage is more theatrical than the simple lighting that the first performances in the parks could offer.

    Setting up a dance stage each year is like creating a small town: in recent festival years, it’s happened three times in three different parks in Akron.

    The City of Akron supported Ohio Ballet’s outdoor summer festival from its inception. After Ohio Ballet folded in 2006, the city continued that rich tradition of dance festivals by sponsoring the event since 2007, under the leadership of Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival co-founders Startzman and then-Mayoral Deputy David Lieberth.

    Today, the outdoor festival features a different dance company each weekend. This year, it kicked off with Ohio Contemporary Ballet in Forest Lodge Park on July 26-27. It continues with GroundWorks DanceTheater on August 2-3 in Firestone Park, and concludes with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company on August 9-10 in Goodyear Heights Metro Park.

    Other esteemed guest companies from outside Northeast Ohio over the years have included Pilobolus, Martha Graham, and Ballet Hispanico.

    “We are a place in the dance scene that we can be proud of and Akron should know that,” Startzman said of the festival.

    “It’s bringing exceptional dance with exceptional technical values ​​to different neighborhoods,” she said. “As far as I know, that’s still unique in the United States, to do it that way, and for free — to offer a gift to people of the arts, for free.”

    For more festival information, see akrondancefestival.org.

    Below you will find an overview of three weekends full of dance performances in the parks.

    Ohio Contemporary Ballet

    As part of Akron’s celebration of 50 years of summer dance, each park performance will feature the 13-minute film “Soaring” about Poll’s life. The film was written and produced by Margaret Carlson, artistic director of the Ohio Contemporary Ballet.

    Ohio Contemporary Ballet will take the stage at 8:45 p.m. July 26 and 27 at Forest Lodge Park, 260 Greenwood Ave. The troupe will perform Richard Dickinson’s contemporary “Carmen,” set to music by Bizet. Other dances include the pas de deux from Gerald Arpino’s 1981 “Light Rain” and Tommie-Waheed Evans’ 2013 “Dark Matter.”

    GroundWorks takes final bow for Akron

    This year’s festival is a milestone for GroundWorks DanceTheater of Cleveland, which will perform its penultimate shows in Firestone Park on August 2 and 3 after 25 years of creating contemporary dance in Northeast Ohio and beyond. Performances begin at 8:45 p.m. at 1480 Girard St.

    The five-member company, founded by former Ohio Ballet dancer David Shimotakahara, will close its doors after a final, free performance Aug. 10 at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights. The small contemporary dance company has faced growing financial shortfalls and the prospect of unsustainable costs with a succession plan, Shimotakahara said.

    “The cost of new leadership, the administrative capacity that would require, the cost of maintaining that just didn’t seem feasible,” said the Cleveland Heights resident, who danced with the Ohio Ballet from 1983 to 1999.

    “The dancer part is the hardest part for me, and the emotional part is these artists that I admire and adore. In many ways, we were in such a good place, artistically, programmatically,” Shimotakahara said of Ahna Bonnette, Madison Pineda, Teagan Reed, Victoria Rumzis and Matthew Saggiomo.

    Twenty-five years ago, Shimotakahara founded his contemporary dance company with dancers who, like him, had ballet roots.

    “I am eternally grateful to Heinz (Poll) for what he started in Akron. The Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival is certainly a direct legacy of his vision and I am just so proud that GroundWorks was able to be a part of that and help continue it,” he said.

    Poll was ahead of his time with his room-sized ballet model doing modern, contemporary and classical ballet work, Shimotakahara said. As a result, the dancer chose to explore contemporary work more deeply with GroundWorks.

    Over the years, GroundWorks has presented dance in unconventional ways, including performing a dozen times at the historic Ice House on North Summit Street in Akron. During COVID, the company has also performed in Akron on the top floor of a Goodrich parking deck and done a drive-in dance in a downtown parking lot, with audience members in cars creating a box-like configuration around the performance space.

    During the Heinz Poll Dance Festival, GroundWorks will bid farewell to the Akron community with the world premiere of “Monk,” Shimotakahara’s tribute to the genius of jazz legend Thelonius Monk.

    “His work is a metaphor for finding beauty in imperfection. It has inspired my thinking about the messiness of life, accepting the things we are not and making the best of what we are,” the choreographer wrote in his program notes.

    The program also includes the world premiere of the play “The Sixth” by Olivier Wevers, founder of Whim W’him Seattle Contemporary Dance.

    In mid-July, GroundWorks in Cleveland continued work on Antonio Brown’s “kick-butt” new work called “Systems Engaged,” which will also have its world premiere in Akron. The piece will feature an original score and sound collage by Brown.

    Shimotakahara, whose career accolades include being named “One of 25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine in 2002 for his work with GroundWorks and winning Summit Artspace’s Arts Alive Award in 2023, said he will take his time deciding what his next steps are.

    He thanked the Akron community for the support they have given him throughout his career, which he loves and is passionate about.

    “It has been a privilege to serve the Akron community for so long and to see my work appreciated and supported by them,” said Shimotakahara.

    Dayton Contemporary Dance Company

    The world-renowned Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC) closes the festival with a performance at 8:45 p.m. on August 9 and 10 at Goodyear Heights Metro Park, 2077 Newton St. Works include William B. McClellan Jr.’s “The Story Unfolds,” Talley Beatty’s modern dance classic “Mourner’s Bench,” Shonna Hickman-Matlock’s “Moments of Indecision” and excerpts from Crystal Michele’s “Body Talk,” which weaves together literature, music, movement and African-American traditions.

    Kerry Clawson, arts and restaurant writer, can be reached at 330-996-3527 or [email protected].

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