By Steve Sucato

It’s been 19 years since former Ohio Ballet co-founder and choreographer Heinz Poll died at age 80 from kidney disease. Since then, Ohio Contemporary Ballet (formerly Verb Ballets) has been the primary force behind keeping Poll’s legacy and his ballets alive. The company has several of Poll’s ballets in its repertoire that are performed regularly. 

This Friday, April 25, at E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall on the University of Akron campus, OCB will once again pay tribute to Heinz Poll with their production, Honoring Heinz Poll. It will feature three of Poll’s ballets, two of which have not been performed since his passing in 2006.

Poll, one of Northeast Ohio’s most celebrated dance figures, was born in Oberhausen, Germany, in 1926. As a child, he was a competitive ice skater. He began studying dance in 1946 at the Folkwang School in Essen-Werden. He then went on to dance professionally with the State Opera Ballet of East Berlin and the National Ballet of Chile before coming to Ohio in 1965 to teach at Kent State University and the University of Akron. 

In 1968, Poll and his life partner, celebrated lighting designer Thomas Skelton, formed Chamber Ballet, a student company at the University of Akron. The company turned professional in 1974 and was renamed Ohio Chamber Ballet, and later Ohio Ballet. The company, until its closure in 2006, performed seasons in Akron and Cleveland, as well as toured nationally and internationally. 

Poll retired from the Ohio Ballet in 1999, having created more than 60 ballets for it, nineteen of which he granted permission to be performed after his death. 

For this Friday night’s tribute program, OCB will perform 1984’s “Light Breeze” and 1990’s “Planes/Configurations” for the first time in their history, along with Poll’s and OCB’s signature ballet, “Bolero” (1996).

Both “Light Breeze” and “Planes/Configurations” were restaged on OCB by former Ohio Ballet company dancer from 1978 to 1994, Debra Force Canuto.

Danced to jazz music by David Sanborn, “Light Breeze” is a 14-minute ballet for 10 dancers in four sections. It begins with a duet in which Force Canuto says Poll wanted to evoke a sense of ice skating. It is followed by a quartet for male dancers, a section for four couples, and a closing duet by the ballet’s opening couple. 

Of the genesis of the music for the ballet, Force Canuto says, “We had actually been playing some of David Sanborn’s music the summer before we began the ballet as intro music for our summer festival performances. Heinz liked the sound of the saxophone, and that inspired the ballet.”  

In contrast, the 17-minute “Planes/Configurations” is an unremitting work for four women and four men set to Steve Reich’s 1997 minimalist composition “Eight Lines (Octet).”

“We had been doing a number of pieces with minimalist music,” recalled Force Canuto about the time period when “Planes/Configurations” was created. “It was kind of the rage then. Heinz liked this piece by Reich, which is in quintuple meter and considered it a challenge to create a ballet using it.”

Force Canuto says that Poll also had the idea of using the contrast between smooth movement and sharp, bright movement for the ballet. 

Where “Light Breeze” and “Planes/Configurations” may be new to audiences, having not been seen in performance in a long time, Poll’s masterwork, “Bolero,” is one that is quite familiar, having been performed on numerous occasions by OCB in the past decade. 

Danced to Maurice Ravel’s iconic score of the same name, “Bolero,” is a unique 16-minute-plus ballet in which the dancers perform in bare feet, often gesturing with thumbs up, and dance with their eyes closed until the last note of the music. 

Poll’s captivating choreography parallels the building excitement of Ravel’s one-movement orchestral piece, which is built on an unchanging ostinato rhythm played 169 times and whose melody is passed among different instruments. As the ballet progresses, dancers are added and dance phrases expanded upon until it reaches a crescendo of magnificent crashing sounds and a blur of whirling bodies and black capes.   

Ohio Contemporary Ballet performs Honoring Heinz Poll, 7 p.m., Friday, April 25, 2025, at E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall on the University of Akron campus, 198 Hill Street in Akron. Tickets are $25, $35, and $45, and can be purchased through Ticket Master or the EJ Thomas Box Office. For more information, visit ocballet.org. 

There will be a Pre-Show Talk in the EJ Thomas Hall lobby at 5:15 PM with a panel of original Ohio Ballet dancers. Hear their stories about working with Heinz Poll.