David Shimotakahara, Artistic Director
GroundWorks Dancetheater

Contact Info: P.O. Box 18191 Cleveland Hts. OH 44118

Email Address: info@groundworksdance.org
Website: www.notsoobvious.com

Business started:
Have been a dance professional for over 30 years. Founded GroundWorks in 1998.

Type of work:
GroundWorks is the region's premiere professional contemporary dance company. The company performs through out Northeast Ohio and beyond with five annual performance series. GroundWorks connects people with live concert dance in unusual ways. Often performances are in non-traditional performance spaces and places of either architectural or historical significance involving new partnerships with organizations through out the region. The concerts are produced on an intimate scale with attention to detail. Audiences are brought into the experience of dance in a very different way from sitting in a distant row of a large impersonal theater. GroundWorks public performances have been described as funny, thought provoking, emotionally charged, and highly physical. Our brand Not So Obvious Entertainment values the unexpected over the usual, and appeals to like minded individuals. GroundWorks collaborates with composers of new music and often features musicians as part of its performances. The company commissions work by guest choreographers, musicians, set and costume designers to bringing the work of nationally and internationally renown creative thinkers to the region. GroundWorks is committed to reaching deeper into communities where it performs providing opportunities for students of all ages with little or no dance experience to learn how movement can be a powerful and beautiful language of communication. The company has been awarded funding from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts for its educational programs. The organization successfully embodies its mission: GroundWorks creates and presents groundbreaking work in contemporary dance that embraces risk and imagination, explores human experience, encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, expands the parameters of how and where dance is presented, and by so doing engages with and enlivens the community of which it is part.

COSE Member since: 2001

Benefits of membership:
Group Health Insurance, Networking and Natural Gas Discounts. Looking into BWC discounts.

About:
I started dancing as a teenager who became disenchanted with his prospects as an actor. My ah ha moment was as the Frog Prince in Rapunzel. Not very convincing as the prince but I sure could hop.

Connect:
Dance-whether you're talking about how it is created or how a performing arts organization becomes part of a community, it is all essentially about relationships.

Advice:
The very best artists and business entreprenuers have similar attitudes; they are incredibly disciplined, often approach problem solving in non linear ways, have no problem with ambiguity, and have the ability to see something to completion and know what that means.

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