“Ballet Unbound” was a diverse mixed-repertory program that landed squarely in Ohio Contemporary Ballet’s sweet spot as a company presenting classical, modern dance, and neoclassical and contemporary ballet works.

Performance
Ohio Contemporary Ballet: “Ballet Unbound” 

Place
Mimi Ohio Theatre at Playhouse Square, Cleveland, March 28, 2026

Words
Steve Sucato

The nearly four-decade-old Cleveland, Ohio-based troupe opened the program with Paul Taylor’s 1978 modern dance masterwork, “Airs.” Set to various orchestral works by George Frideric Handel, the 25-minute piece, performed by four women and three men, conjured images of air and water currents. A work steeped in Taylor’s signature athletic, fluid movement style, OCB’s dancers acquitted themselves nicely in the style, harnessing their speed and agility to bring an effervescence to Taylor’s rapid-paced choreography, as well as quiet control to its slower passages meant to appear as if they were moving through liquid.  

Standout performances came from a sprightly Katherine Chang, who darted about the stage with energy, Kia Jimmy and Joseph Dang, who wowed in a lightning-fast-footwork duet, and an elegant Kelly Korfhage, who also shone magnificently in the program’s next work, Heinz Poll’s “Adagio for Two Dancers” (1973).

One of the late German choreographer’s finest pas de deux, “Adagio for Two Dancers,” evoked the image of a man and woman dancing under the ethereal light of a cathedral window. Set to Tomaso Albinoni’s Adagio for Strings and Organ, the statuesque Korfhage and partner Isaac Hileman executed a series of daring overhead lifts and close-quartered turns that felt reverential, loving, and filled with a sacred beauty.

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