Tribute in dance

By Kerry Clawson
Beacon Journal staff writer

The Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet will continue to celebrate its 35th season with the reprisal of a ballet the late founder Nan Klinger helped choose just before her death, as well as a lively new ballet honoring Klinger’s larger-than-life personality.

Performances Saturday and March 13 at the Akron Civic Theatre will include the crowd favorite Madeline at the Circus, chronicling the adventures of the beloved Parisian storybook heroine based on tales by Ludwig Bemelmans. New York choreographer Francis Patrelle, who created the dance in 2004, has returned to put a fresh spin on the work, full of dancing ponies, clowns, bearded ladies and a Ferris wheel.

The dance will provide colorful contrast to the new, high-voltage Symphonic NANsense by Tom Gold, a former soloist for the New York City Ballet. Gold’s goal was to create a colorful, exuberant, playful piece that honored the late Klinger, who died in 2003.

”It’s more about who she was as a person — her joie de vivre, her joy for life, her exuberance,” Gold said. ”Nan was one of the funniest, wittiest, most intelligent people I know.”

Gold knew Klinger for about a decade, when she brought her top students to the New York City Ballet’s summer home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., for them to train at
the Brianski School of Ballet Summer Camp. Gold is among the colleagues, former students and friends interviewed for a video tribute to Klinger that will run before each performance next weekend at the Civic.

He danced as a guest artist with the CVYB in 1996 and choreographed Seasonings for the company in 2003.

Mia Klinger, Nan Klinger’s daughter who is artistic director for the Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet, asked Gold to create a celebratory ballet in honor of her mother because he’s the last choreographer she employed. She asked that her mother’s name be somehow incorporated into the title, so Gold decided to create a play on words with the dance’s playful kind of nonsense — hence the NANsense.

”It’s in essence a classical ballet but it’s fun and lively and silly,” Gold said of the six-part dance, set to music by Leroy Anderson. He said he chose full-bodied, symphonic music as another reflection of Nan Klinger’s big personality.

At a recent dress rehearsal at the Nan Klinger Excellence in Dance studio in Cuyahoga Falls, the 40 young company members wore jewel-toned costumes designed by Gold in lavender, pink and turquoise. Gold incorporated sequined circles and triangles to represent champagne bubbles and confetti on the dancers’ bodices, in honor of the anniversary celebration. Each girl also had an ”N” embroidered on her bodice, under the tutu, in honor of Miss Nan.

The charming, fast-paced dance starts with two playful jazz sections and then crosses over into witty humor with the speedy Typewriter Song, where the dancers’ heads evoke the typewriter’s carriage return, and Syncopated Clock, where their bodies create a pendulum effect.

”He just has such cute choreography, perfect for the kids,” Mia Klinger said of Gold. ”Kids love it because it’s just so musical, and it [the dance] fits perfectly with the music.”

The final, joyful Bugler’s Holiday is full of nonstop leaps and pirouettes: ”This is a killer piece because they don’t stop,” Mia Klinger said.

Mia Klinger said her mother was the first to teach a 11/2-hour ballet class in the area and the first to make her kids wear leotards and tights.

”She was the first classical ballet teacher in this area,” Mia Klinger said.

Nan Klinger was trained by her own mother, Gertrude Holvey, in West Akron. Nan started her studio in the basement of her Cuyahoga Falls home while raising six children. The Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet was founded in 1975 in the basement of a Lawson’s store on Portage Trail in Cuyahoga Falls before the company and school moved to its current State Road location in 1989.

Mia remembers taking classes in the basement of her home as young as age 2: ”We all had no choice. We all danced.”

Three of the four girls went into dance professionally, including sister Lori Klinger, who runs Rosie’s Theater Kids in New York with Rosie O’Donnell; and Kim White, who ran a youth ballet in Switzerland.

Nan Klinger Excellence in Dance instructor Kara Stewart, a former student, said when Nan made pronouncements, people took notice. She remembers when she returned to Nan’s studio years later as a teacher, her mentor bluntly informed her she would head Reach Out and Dance, which has now grown into the state’s largest dance outreach program for students.

”I had no idea what R.O.A.D. was” at the time, Stewart said. ”I’m not gonna tell her no.”

In the video tribute, Stewart shares what it was like studying with Nan Klinger as a child.

”I remember wanting to please her so badly. She made you believe you could do anything you wanted to do,” Stewart said. ”She had that ability to inspire kids to do their best every moment of every day.”

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Arts writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.