Who’s Next 2023 – dance

Posted by: CanvasCLE Categories: Artist Features

Dance is an art form that thrives slightly under the radar compared to visual art or theater in Northeast Ohio. A professional career is demanding on a dancer’s body, requires years of training, often starting at a young age, and usually relies on a touch of luck to be successful. Moreover, it entails mental challenges inherent to all creative crafts, which have been further intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this annual fall stage issue of Canvas, we highlight a few talented and dedicated dancers – each associated with different local companies – who proudly call Cleveland home.

Marla Aleyda

Marla Aleyda says it wasn’t until this year – her almost fifth on-contract with the Cleveland Ballet as a company artist – did she feel like a “real ballerina.”

A lifelong dancer, she was raised in the Cleveland Ballet company. Her mother, Gladisa Guadalupe, is the ballet’s co-founder and artistic director, and when Aleyda was 18 months old, Guadalupe began bringing her daughter into the studio.

“She didn’t want to pay for a babysitter,” Aleyda jokes.

Now a lover of all things ballet, Aleyda says she hated the art form at the start of her journey.

“For the longest time I would sit during class – like, refuse to participate,” she recalls.

Ahna Bonnette

When Ahna Bonnette was 9 years old, it first clicked that dancing professionally could be a real option. After years of training hard, in 2022 that became a reality when she joined GroundWorks DanceTheater – a company unusually good in terms of its comfortable environment and opportunities to work with choreographers from around the world, she says. It’s all kept her “happy ever since.”

Bonnette describes her style as contemporary, but notes her “secret little love” for ballet also plays a role.

“I really like taking classical structures of dance and distorting them and contorting them … kind of breaking the structure and the mold a little bit,” she says.

Growing up in Scottsdale, Ariz., Bonnette’s mother, a former NFL cheerleader for the Philadelphia Eagles, started her in ballet classes at 2 years old.

“Honestly since that day, I don’t think a day has gone by in my life that I haven’t danced,” Bonnette says.

Antonio Morillo

Antonio Morillo found his way to dance later in life than many professional dancers. It was during his first year at Point Park University’s Conservatory of Performing Arts in Pittsburgh, where was he was studying musical theater.

Financial complications forced him to leave, but he was determined to continue learning the art of dance, he says.

Morillo picked up his studies at Valencia College in Orlando, Fla., where he received a two-year degree. Then, he attended the University of South Florida in Tampa to receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance performance, and he spent his last semester starting his career at Verb, “Ohio Contemporary Ballet” in Shaker Heights in 2016.

Morillo already faced hardships due to starting his dance journey at an older age, he explains. But he encountered one of his most difficult obstacles during his first year at Verb Ballet as a company dancer.

“I actually broke my leg on stage while performing in Tremont at Lincoln Park,” he recalls. “So, I broke my ankle and my fibula, and I had about eight to 10 months before I was back with the company.”