TRUMBULL COUNTY VERB Ballets plans downtown performance

Repertory dances and two major dance revivals are part of the program.
WARREN -- Cleveland's VERB Ballets will present a free performance at 9 p.m. Saturday at the Warren Community Amphitheater downtown by the Mahoning River.
The concert is sponsored by the Fine Arts Council of Trumbull County with support from the First Place Bank Community Foundation, St. Joseph's Health Care Center, Trumbull 100 and the Ohio Arts Council.
In the program
The program consists of two major dance revivals and the return of popular repertory dances. They include:
"Esplanade," the first major revival for VERB Ballets this summer, is a restaging of Paul Taylor's signature classic. VERB artistic director Hernando Cortez, former longtime dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, restaged the ballet over a three-week period this past May and June. "Esplanade" is set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach's Violin Concertos in D, E minor, and Double Violin Concerto.
"Continuo," the second major revival, is a ballet miniature by choreographer Antony Tudor, and is set to Johann Pachelbel's "Canon for Strings."
Two popular VERB repertory dances complete the Warren program. They are:
"The Envelope, by New York choreographer David Parsons, is a farcical romp where the dancers are pitted against a renegade piece of stationery. The music is set to Rossini, with lighting design by Howell Binkley.
"Planet Soup" was created in 1999 by VERB Ballets' Cortez. Set to the Afro-Celt Sound System and other contemporary World Music artists, it unifies folk and vernacular dances from around the world in an athletic hybrid of movement styles, including Indian traditional, Irish reels, and African rituals.
The full company cross-cultural fusion also incorporates & quot;tinikling, & quot; the authentic Filipino folk dance in which dancers step between clapping poles.
VERB Ballets contemporary dance repertory company has been designated as one of the & quot;25 to Watch & quot; by Dance Magazine, a national dance publication.
The company consists of Marcela Alvarez, Kallie Marie Bokal, Danielle Brickman, Erin Conway, Nicole Dalia, Hoang Ngoc Dang (guest artist), Elizabeth Flynn, Ellen Ressler Hoffman, Jason Ignacio, Shannon Mulcahy DiNota, Glynn Owens, DeAnn Petruschke, Anna Roberts, Mark Tomasic, Tracy Vogt, Brooke Wesner, and Robert Wesner.