Verb Ballets was in town not too long ago, performing on the main stage at Akron Civic Theatre, a Knight Arts grantee, for a captivated audience. They are coming back and bringing a new show, this one with two traditional works of the late Heinz Poll that are clearly classics of modern ballet — “Andante Sostenuto” and “Duet” — but a couple of newer works as well (actually created this year) — Antonio Brown’s “Passing By” and Tommie-Waheed Evans’ “Dark Matter.”

Tommie-Waheed Evan, choreographer. Photo from Waheed Works Library

The dance “Dark Matter” was made this summer when Philadelphia Dance Company dancer Evans (who also has his own pick-up company called Waheed Works, a Dance Project that performs only pieces made by Evans himself) came to town ready to give form to some strongly-felt dance ideas he had. In a telephone interview, Evans said that the work “kind of emerged” to him through some music he had. When he said “had,” he meant it because he held title and performance rights to the compositions of Greg Smith (who lived with Evans for a while). Arranger Jordan Channing took the pieces of music and turned them into a kind of “musical story,” Evans said. He added some Johann Sebastian Bach phrases that he likes, and voilà, a dance became “manifest,” as he put it, when he started work with Verb dancers.

Evans said his aim is to get the audience intellectually involved. For him, the “viewer sets his own scene,” that is, whether they are in the beginning throes of the emotional issue, during it, or at the release from the dark matter at the core of his dance.

The dance came as well from a poem that Evans read that had at its core the idea of love lost. Coupling his sense of the “love and spirituality of God” with a metaphoric “war zone of love,” Evans created a piece that is set, he said, on 10 dancers. Essentially grounded “definitely in ensemble” work, there is a duet that happens between group movement, and a male solo section at the beginning of the piece. The ensemble sections then might be seen as a kind of choral refrain around the pieces with fewer dancers, where more action may be located.

You might develop some notion of the flavor of Evans’ work by knowing his choreographic influences — Dwight Rhoden of Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Donald Byrd of Seattle’s Spectrum Dance Theater, and Alvin Ailey of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Of Byrd, Evans commented that his works are “built intelligently on simple concepts,” a trait that Evans aspires to in his own creations.

Verb Ballets. Photo by Mark Horning

Verb Ballets will perform its dance concert at 8 p.m. on Saturday, September 28 in Akron Civic Theatre, 182 S. Main St., Akron; 330-253-2488; www.akroncivic.com. Tickets are $25.