A six-year-old Cleveland dance company built around African diaspora movement traditions is about to perform on one of the biggest stages in Ohio. Mojuba! Dance Collective will make its debut at Cleveland's 2026 Annual Dance Showcase, sharing the bill with Cleveland Ballet, Ohio Contemporary Ballet, and Dancing Wheels Company at the 2,800-seat Connor Palace inside Playhouse Square.
The free concert starts at 7 p.m. next Friday, Sept. 4, at the Connor Palace, located at 1615 Euclid Ave., with ticket information available at Playhouse Square. As Cleveland.com reports, the showcase also features Elevated Dance Crew, Soar, Angelina DiFranco, Rhythmicle Sound Tap Company, and Pacific Paradise Entertainment. For Mojuba!, founded by Errin Weaver in 2019, the invitation marks a leap onto a stage built to host the region's most established companies.
Weaver, who serves as the company's founder and executive artistic director, told the outlet that being selected for the showcase and included among its featured companies was phenomenal. “I've had my eye on it a long time, but this time, I made it a priority,” she said, according to the same report.
A Company Rooted in Diaspora Technique
Mojuba! employs a blend of classical ballet, Horton technique, and the Swahili-named Umfundalai style, according to Cleveland.com's reporting. Umfundalai, meaning “essential” in Kiswahili, was developed by the late Dr. Kariamu Welsh as a codified Pan-African technique synthesizing movement traditions from across the African diaspora, according to Stance on Dance. African dance more broadly employs complex polyrhythms and isolation of body parts, per the same Cleveland.com account.
Weaver is also trained in the Katherine Dunham Technique, a system that originated in the 1930s and 1940s integrating classical ballet and modern dance with traditional Afro-Caribbean movements, laying critical groundwork for 20th-century Pan-African contemporary dance, according to the Dance Theatre of Harlem. That academic grounding extends to Weaver's own credentials: per Cleveland Public Theatre, she holds a Master's in Public Service from DePaul University and an MFA in Choreography and Interdisciplinary Studies from Wilson College, along with M'Singha Wuti-level teaching certification in Umfundalai. She also serves as a visiting guest artist at Cleveland State University.
What Mojuba! Will Perform
The company will present a piece titled “In Honor of Our Mothers Who Makeshift and Shapeshift So That We Can Code-Switch,” described in the Cleveland.com report as a performance ritual and embodied storytelling work about learning from elders and ancestors. Weaver told the outlet that the music behind the piece is not just a backdrop, underscoring how sound and movement are woven together in the company's approach.
Mojuba! currently includes six full-time company members and seven apprentices, totaling 13 dancers, per the same report. The company's stated mission is to ground authentic African dance in Cleveland and to use it to enrich young people's lives across the region, with its research shared through concerts, schools, and camps. Weaver said she wants audiences to see themselves in Mojuba! and be moved by the work, according to Cleveland.com.
Cleveland's Deep Bench of Dance History
The showcase puts Mojuba! alongside companies with decades of regional history. Ohio Contemporary Ballet rebranded from its former name, Verb Ballets, in October 2023 under producing artistic director Dr. Margaret Carlson, building on 35 years of history from a 6,000-square-foot center in Shaker Heights, according to Broadway World. Dancing Wheels Company, meanwhile, was founded in Cleveland in 1980 by Mary Verdi-Fletcher as the nation's first professional physically integrated dance company for artists with and without disabilities, and has reached more than 5.5 million people worldwide over four decades, per Stance on Dance.
The Connor Palace itself carries its own weight in that history. It opened in November 1922 as the flagship vaudeville venue known as the B.F. Keith Palace Theatre, built at an estimated cost of over $2 million, and was later saved alongside its neighboring theaters during a 1970s grassroots revival effort that preserved Playhouse Square as the largest performing arts center in the country outside New York City, according to Wikipedia.
Building Toward a Bigger Platform
Mojuba! aims to be a hub for Black dancers, Black cultural dance, and Black stories, seeking to connect with audiences and leave viewers with a positive feeling, per Cleveland.com's reporting. The company partners locally with Karamu House, which was founded in 1915 in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood and is recognized as the oldest continuously operating Black theater in the United States, having famously premiered multiple works by poet and playwright Langston Hughes, according to Wikipedia.
Beyond the stage, Mojuba! has built out programs including the Emerging Black Choreographers Incubator, launched in 2021 to offer virtual mentorship, creative development, and stipends to rising Black dance artists, according to Cause IQ. The organization also produces its own annual Mojuba! Festival of Black Dance and Culture. For Mojuba!, the free showcase at the Connor Palace represents a chance to reach and build a new audience, according to Cleveland.com, one that could carry beyond a single night on Playhouse Square's storied stage.
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