Sat 10/3 @ 7PM
You may have already heard that there’s a new Cleveland Ballet performing at Playhouse Square this Saturday. It’s headed by Gladisa Guadalupe, who many will remember as a dancer with the old Cleveland San Jose Ballet, the principal teacher at the old School of Cleveland Ballet and a prominent ballet teacher in Northeast Ohio ever since.
The new group’s debut program, dubbed Past.Present.Future, will include new dances by Guadalupe and Robert Wesner, artistic director of Akron’s Neos Dance Theatre. Also on the program are excerpts from Raymonda, set on the company by Guadalupe and Cynthia Graham, another alumna of the old Cleveland Ballet.
The new Cleveland Ballet’s debut performance will be danced to live music played by two excellent pianists, Jee-Won Oh and Gerardo Teissonniere, both of whom have enjoyed international performing careers. Teissonniere now teaches piano at Cleveland Institute of Music but we first knew him as an accompanist in ballet classes. Oh frequently collaborates on chamber music projects with her husband, Mark Kosower,, who is the principal cello player with Cleveland Orchestra.
All or nearly all of the 14 dancers appearing in this program have previously appeared with Neos, which is a good thing. As we said in our recent review of Neos, “This is an unusually good-looking local ballet company.”
It bodes well for this and future performances that the dancers have an unusually stable employment situation. Michael Krasnyansky, Cleveland Ballet’s chairman of the board, tells us that the dancers are employees of the new Cleveland Ballet on a nine-month contract.
And what about the future? Krasnyansky say, “Our plans are to build a world-class ballet company in our city with happy and healthy dancers.”
Sounds good to us. We’ll be sure to watch the dancing as it all unfolds.
The new Cleveland Ballet performs Sat 10/3 at 7pm at PlayhouseSquare’s Ohio Theatre. Tickets are $20-$49 through the PlayhouseSquare box office online here or by phone at 216-241-6000. Learn more about the new Cleveland Ballet and future events here.
[Written by Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas]Cleveland, OH 44115