By Steve Sucato 

The 21st iteration of Cleveland Public Theatre’s DanceWorks series — the longest-running annual dance series of its kind in the region — will treat audiences to five weeks worth of eclectic dance and dance theatre works, running every Thursday through Saturday evenings, April 17 – May 17, 2025, at CPT’s James Levin Theatre.  

This year’s line-up of local dance artists will include series regulars plus several newcomers. Two first-timers to the series are Christina Lindhout & Artists and Blissed Out Human Collective, who make up week five’s double-bill program, Common Threads.

Lindhout & Artists will premiere company founder, director, and choreographer Christina Lindhout’s latest work, “our knees hurt.” It is the sixth work the former Ohio Contemporary Ballet dancer and current Assistant Professor of Dance at Baldwin Wallace University has presented in Cleveland in the past five years.

The 35-minute-plus piece was inspired, says Lindhout, by the conversations she had with friends, coworkers, students, and family and coming to the realization that “just by virtue of waking up every morning and being a female-identifying person, we were all going through similar things that were super unfair.”

Lindhout says her anger and frustration came to a tipping point after this past November’s election. “our knees hurt” is a response to the pervasive gender inequity in the U.S. and globally.

Delivered in six sections, the contemporary dance work for 9 female dancers begins with a floorwork section in which the dancers perform on their knees (hence the work’s title). Another section called “squished” parodies how our culture places a lot of emphasis on how women and female-identifying people should look, sound, and behave,” says Lindhout. 

Although the subject matter of the work is serious, Lindhout says that it is delivered in a mostly humorous, tongue-in-cheek manner. “I don’t really think the points we are trying to make in the work are going to land if we come at them from a place of anger and frustration.”

Another example of that humor comes in a section called “sandwich interlude,” where one of the performers comes onto the stage and starts making sandwiches as a metaphor for female domestic servitude. 

“our knees hurt” is danced to a variety of music, from an original percussion piece by Lindhout’s partner Ian Waddell and an excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” to voiceovers and a recording of a deep space humming noise believed to be a remnant of the Big Bang that is an undercurrent for the entire work.

Common Threads’ other half features the premiere of Blissed Out Human Collective’s “Unravel.”

Formed in 2024, Blissed Out Human Collective is the creation of dancer, choreographer, and director Amanda Butterfield. The Cleveland native says her interest in choreographing began at age five in her backyard, creating a dance to a song from the Disney film Lady and the Tramp. Her formal dance training began at a dance studio in Westlake and continued at the University of Cincinnati and Ohio University. After college, Butterfield danced in New York City for a short time before moving to Austin, Texas, in 2005, where she started her own non-profit arts organization, Yellow Tape Construction. There, she produced the dance programs We Are Normal, Cha Cha Chaa, and A Thumping Raging Explosion of Light and Marvelous Texture. 

Only the second work created under the banner of Blissed Out Human Collective, “Unravel,” co-choreographed by Butterfield and the work’s cast, is described as a sequence of contemporary dance movement vignettes about building, unraveling, and repair. 

A work for nine dancers, including Butterfield, “Unravel” is set to music by Simon Green, an English musician, producer, and DJ based in Los Angeles, also known by his stage name Bonobo.

The twenty-minute-plus piece mixes dance and crochet and has its performers dancers move through yarn-constructed landscapes, weaving creations with their bodies, such as in one vignette that uses giant yarn the performers weave together using their full bodies as life-size crochet hooks. 

While “Unravel” and “our knees hurt” are two distinctly different dance works, owing to the program’s title, Butterfield and Lindhout see common threads of femininity, growth, and overcoming challenges between the works.

Here’s a look at the rest of DanceWorks 2025:

Week 1: April 17-19, 2025
Ohio Contemporary Ballet
An Evening in Spain

OCB’s An Evening in Spain showcases two timeless Spanish-flavored musical masterpieces brought to life through the power of dance. The iconic score for Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen provides the soundtrack to OCB Associate Artistic Director and choreographer Richard Dickinson’s 2024 ballet reimagining of Carmen.

Making its Cleveland debut, the one-act drama that Dickinson describes “as a series of dances linked by the presence of Fate,” Carmen takes an alternative approach to the tragic story of the cigar factory temptress and her lover, Don Jose. Rather than the stereotypical volatile philanderess, Dickinson presents us with a more sympathetic Camen character, one not unlike Sandy Olsson from Grease. The characterization makes her abusive relationship with and crime-of-passion demise at the hands of Don Jose an even more unnerving psychological thriller.

Joining Carmen on the program will be OCB favorite Heinz Poll’s signature ballet, Bolero (1996). Danced to Maurice Ravel’s popular composition of the same name, the ballet is a masterwork of swirling bodies, whirling capes, and mounting excitement. ocballet.org

Week 2: April 24-26, 2025
Inlet Dance Theatre
In Response

A program of transportive, athletic, and imaginative dance works, Inlet’s new crop of dancers will present two new movement sketches along with four past works from its repertory. 

A sequel to the company’s popular touring show, What Do You Do with an Idea, based on author Kobi Yamada’s award-winning children’s book of the same name, Inlet will present a movement sketch from its new work-in-progress based on another of Yamada’s books, What Do You Do With a Problem.

The second of the new movement sketches to be shown, Artistic Director Bill Wade’s “Tethered,” takes its inspiration from common stressors in our lives, including finances, social media, and family issues. The 10-minute work for 8 dancers is danced to original music by Cleveland Institute of Music graduate Joel Negus. inletdance.org

Week 3: May 1-3, 2025
BLAKK JAKK DANCE COLLECTIVE
Rhythms of Heritage

Community project-based dance company Blakk Jakk Dance Collective premieres the latest dance work by Founding Artistic Director RonDale Simpson entitled “Rhythms of Heritage.” The piece explores the ancestral connections and similarities between South African Gumboot dance and Stepping, an energetic dance style rooted in African American culture that is popular at Black fraternities and sororities in America. Also, on the 10-member Collective’s CPT program, will be works by Blakk Jakk Associate Artistic Director Darnell Weaver. instagram.com/blakkjakkdance

Week 4— May 8-10, 2025
AJAYI DANCE
Again and Again and

Premiering three new works in addition to the stage adaptation of the 2022 site-specific work Place in Time: There|Then (originally set at Hale Farm and Village), AJAYI Dance’s first-ever full evening production will feature more than 20 local artists, original music by Luke Rinderknecht, and live performance by the Nightingales A Cappella Choir. Audiences can expect a visceral journey of reflection, a reckoning of personal and collective responsibility, and a celebration of resilience utilizing joy as resistance.

Week 5— May 15-17, 2025 
Common Threads – DOUBLE BILL!

Cleveland Public Theatre presents DanceWorks 2025, Thursday through Saturday evenings, April 17 – May 17, 2025. The James Levin Theatre at CPT, 6415 Detroit Ave., Cleveland. 

TICKET INFORMATION
– General Admission: $40 adult, $30 senior, $20 student
– Choose What You Pay GA: First-come-first-served $10 and $1 tickets!
– VIP: $80 reserved seat + bar voucher through the Box Office

Also, every Friday is Free Bev Friday at CPT, where patrons and artists can mingle and discuss the performance and enjoy select complimentary beverages.

For Tickets and information, visit cptonline.org or call 216.631.2727 x 501