By Steve Sucato

Dancer-choreographer Melissa Ajayi’s interest in creating her own dance works came at a young age in her hometown dance studio in New Philadelphia, Ohio. It only grew stronger over the years as a dance major at Kent State University and as a freelance dance artist living in New York City and Lexington, Kentucky. So, forming her own eponymous project-based dance company in 2021 was a natural next step in her evolution as a dancemaker. 

“Movement alone or with other people always felt like the most authentic way to explore and express my responses to the world around me and to my emotions,” says Ajayi. “My goal with the company is to create dance that inspires and deepens a sense of connection to self, others, and the community.”

Another mission of Ajayi Dance, says the 2023 Ohio Arts Council Artist Opportunity Award winner and 2024 recipient of the Cleveland Public Theatre Individual Artist Fund Award, is to highlight dance happening in Cleveland beyond its well-known professional dance companies and to provide local freelance dancers with additional opportunities to perform. 

Those objectives all come together June 19-21, 2026, at Playhouse Square’s Westfield Studio Theatre, when the company presents its most ambitious production to date, Half the Sky. The program of new and existing contemporary dance works explores themes of individual and collective identity and responsibility.

The title Half the Sky comes from the famous proclamation, “Women hold up half the sky,” made by Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong, which was used to assert women’s equality with men and to encourage their active participation in the workforce and the socialist revolution. 

“It was this wonderful idea of people buying into gender equality and encouraging women in the workplace, but the other domestic labor and child-rearing role women had outside the workplace didn’t change,” says Ajayi. “Women were encouraged to hold up half the sky and do what men were doing, but there wasn’t a similar shift for me to take on any other responsibility. Given the themes of the works on the program and the feelings of many of the cast, it seemed like an appropriate title.”

Featuring a cast of 18 local dancers, the 95-minute Half the Sky will begin with former Pilobolus Dance Theater and GroundWorks DanceTheater dancer Annika Sheaff’s “Time is A Mountain” (2025), a thought-provoking piece for six dancers that explores the female condition. 

Danced to music by William Labossiere, an instructor and staff musician at Texas Christian University, and Ray Charles, the prop-laden piece shows the beauty and darkness that coexist in all aspects of being a woman, specifically through the lenses of mother, wife, impossible beauty standards, workplace inequity, and objectification. 

Next, Sheaff takes the stage as a performer in a solo from Monica Bill Barnes’ 2021 work Wish You Were Here. Set to Glenn Gould’s performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Partita No.1 in B-Flat Major” and The Supremes singing “This Old Heart of Mine,” Wish You Were Here is said to have been born out of necessity while Barnes was dancing by herself in her physical therapist’s office, and that the work and the humorous solo from it resemble a partner dance without a partner. 

A reprise of Ajayi’s “AGAIN and AGAIN and” follows. The multimedia work for 11 dancers performed to music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Garth Stevenson, and MaMuse. Of my 2025 review of the powerful dance-theater piece, themed on injustice, I wrote: Ajayi’s choreography shone best in the work’s middle section, with the cast of eleven performers dancing in unison to dreamy music. Their bodies drifted and swayed about the stage in fluid, rhythmic movements. “AGAIN and AGAIN and,” ended with the dancers vocalizing the lyrics to folk duo MaMuse’s song “We Shall Be Known,” which morphed into a well-intentioned “Kumbaya moment” with the audience.   

The production will conclude with an extended excerpt from Ajayi’s latest work in progress, “Gentle Men Let Us Rest.” The 52-minute excerpt, with choreographic contributions from the performers, features a cast of 12 and explores “masculinity”—questioning how our society defines and values it, and how this value system affects everyone.  

Says Ajayi, “Through a lot of research, and using the results of four community focus groups, along with deep discussions with many people and movement explorations with the dancers, I learned that men are seeking a way to connect with themselves and each other, but our society is holding them back from fully doing so. I also questioned how I have contributed to and/or benefited from this system. This work is an effort to move the needle in a positive direction to offer an example of men offering and accepting support for each other.” 

Set to an eclectic soundtrack that includes two L.E. Bowman poems and music by composers Ludovico Einaudi, Jóhann Jóhannsson, and Federico Albanese, as well as rockers Big Head Todd and the Monsters and Sean Rowe, the work also took inspiration from experiences in Ajayi’s personal life. 

“In creating the work, I was watching several men in my life go through difficult situations and struggling to talk about it or cope, while many of the women in their lives were carrying their emotional burden,” she says. “This work is an effort to move the needle in a positive direction, providing an example of men offering and accepting support for each other.” 

Ajayi Dance will perform Half the Sky at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, June 19 & Saturday, June 20, and at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 21, 2026. Playhouse Square’s Westfield Studio Theatre, inside the Idea Center, 1375 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, Ohio. 

All tickets are general admission seating and choose your price as follows:

$12.00 each including fees (community access price)
$24.00 each including fees (artist/student/senior price)
$36.00 each including fees (suggested market price)
$48.00 each including fees (pay it forward price)
$60.00 each including fees (sustaining supporter price)

For more information and tickets, visit playhousesquare.org/events/detail/ajayi-dance or call (216) 241-6000.