Everything but the ‘Nutcracker:’ a plethora of dance performances offer something for everyone this holiday season

In an era when the market starts gearing up for the winter holidays right after Halloween, in November and December, even lifelong Nutcracker fans might be looking for something different to jolt us out of the daily routine and remind us of the vibrant artistic community that surrounds us during this special time of year. From Flamenco to contact improv, family-friendly story ballets, free outdoor performances and experimental projects that defy expectations and expand definitions, ArtsATL presents a guide to what else Atlanta dance has to offer through the end of 2025.   

Those looking forward to their annual pilgrimage to Ballethnic’s Urban Nutcracker, which gives the winter standard an Atlanta spin, or Atlanta Ballet’s lavishly high-tech staging of Yuri Possokhov’s innovative update, or the Grand Kyiv Ballet’s production at Atlanta Symphony Hall, might enjoy taking in a performance or two (or three) from this list. Think of it as a savory or piquant palate-cleanser to prepare one’s aesthetic taste buds for the main course of sugar and spice and everything nice.

Mixed Repertory and Interdisciplinary Events
Mixed repertory shows offer audiences an opportunity to see several shorter works in one sitting, often featuring works by different choreographers. As Douglas Scott, founder and artistic director of Full Radius Dance has said of the decades-old annual juried showcase Modern Atlanta Dance Festival, each piece on a mixed bill is a unique take on what contemporary theatrical dance can be. He encourages audiences to, “hang around. If you don’t like that first piece, maybe the next one will be a work that really speaks to you.”

Kennesaw State University Dance, Labyrinth
Thursday, November 13, at 7:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, November 14 and November 15, at 8 p.m.
Kennesaw State University – Marietta Dance Theater, 860 Rossbacher Way, Marietta
The Dance Department at KSU is commemorating its 20th anniversary season, and the newly renamed Geer College of the Arts is still celebrating a historic gift of more than $10 million by the late Robert S. Geer. Labyrinth is this fall’s student company dance concert, featuring four works by the Dance Department’s founding chair and current KSU provost Ivan Pulinkala; limited term faculty Shannon Alvis; artistic director for the Department of Dance and Assistant Professor Autumn Eckman; and world-renowned Israeli choreographer and BAMAH visiting artist Yankalle Filtser.

Emory Dance Department, Emory Dance Company Fall Concert
Wednesday through Saturday, November 19 through November 22, at 7:30 p.m.
Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts – Dance Studio, 1700 N. Decatur Road, Atlanta
The Dance Department at Emory is hosting the second Emory Arts fellow in dance, Madelyn Sher, who will create and produce a new full-length work in the spring. The fall concert will provide audiences with a preview of her choreographic talents in a shorter work set on the student company. In addition to Sher’s piece and new dances from Mara Mandradjieff, as well as Emory dance faculty Gregory Catellier and Kristin O’Neal, the program will feature contributions from Atlanta-based guest artists Andre Lumpkin and Meg Gourley. 

Spelman College and Emory University, Emory Arts and Social Justice Project Showcase and Community Conversation  
Thursday, December 4, at 6 p.m. (free event)
Mary Schmidt Campbell Center of Innovation & the Arts, 407 Westview Drive SW, Atlanta
For the second year in a row, Emory’s Arts & Social Justice Program has included Spelman faculty among the academic collaborators paired with the selected Atlanta-area artist fellows. The multidisciplinary showcase will feature an evening of exhibits, performance and conversation with participating faculty and artists, their current students and the community at large. In addition to the results of this semester’s projects, attendees will have an opportunity to see SwitchCodes #3, a collaborative performance series by T. Lang, associate professor and founding chair of Spelman’s dance performance and choreography program, and Adam Mirza, assistant professor of composition at Emory. The two were the first ASJ pairing to bridge the Emory and Spelman campuses.

Komansé Dance Theater, A Night With Komansé
Wednesday and Thursday, December 3 and December 4, at 7 p.m.
The Paideia Black Box Theater & Art Lobby, 1509 S. Ponce De Leon Ave .NE, Atlanta
This event will feature live dance and music as well as selections from Komansé Dance Theater’s dance-on-film productions. Audiences will have an opportunity to see new work in process by founder and Artistic Director Raianna Brown; Akeem J. Edwards, based in Jacksonville, Florida; and Rochelle Phillips, also based in Florida and currently serving as a resident choreographer at Spelman College, her alma mater. Atlanta-based renowned contemporary cellist Okorie “OKCello” Johnson will make a special guest appearance.  

Evening-length Performances
Evening-length works — like the Nutcracker — are an opportunity to sit back and become familiar with the style of one choreographer and the technical skill and artistry of an ensemble of dancers while a story or idea unfolds over the course of an hour or two of dance. 

Bluebird Uncaged, Sterling’s Path 2025 
Saturday, November 29, at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre — White Box, 75 Bennett St. Northwest, Atlanta
Atlanta-based dancer Rebekah Diaddigo founded Bluebird Uncaged in 2012, with a mission to share Christian faith and community through dance. Over the past few years, Bluebird Uncaged’s Winter Fairytale has become an annual family-friendly holiday event infused with a universal message about finding hope and strength in challenging times. This multimedia theatrical dance production follows the story of a young girl as she fights to free a magical bird in order to save her town from a marauding dragon. 

Meg Gourley, In Light of These Regrets
Saturday, December 6, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, December 7, at 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.
Decatur School of Ballet, 141 Sams St., #Suite C, Decatur
Dance patrons are perhaps most familiar with Meg Gourley as a member of Atlanta-based Kit Modus. She also performs regularly in projects by local choreographers, including Nadya Zeitlin and Meaghan Novoa. Her choreography has been included in DanceATL’s interdisciplinary incubator A.M. Collaborative and Excuse the Art, an emerging artist showcase produced by Fly on a Wall. This new immersive performance — which will make use of the entire building, with audience seats changing over the course of the show — is part of Gourley’s work toward her M.F.A in dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Site-specific Performances
Dance performances in public spaces bring together dedicated connoisseurs with the curious, intrigued by new faces and activity in a familiar space. Describing her participation in site-specific outdoor performances with Atlanta-based glo, dancer Hiroko Kelly said, “In these places, being heart-to-heart with the public, the choreographies become larger than in the studio or onstage.” Both of the events below take place in bustling hubs within the city, in close proximity to restaurants and other attractions. Because they are designed to allow audiences to come and go, these shows would be particularly easy to blend into an afternoon or evening out on the town.

Core Dance, Breath
Streaming nightly in the studio windows through November 30 (free event)
Core Dance Studios, 133 Sycamore St., Decatur
This video installation is part of Core Dance’s inside:out programming, designed to activate the square in downtown Decatur with video installations that document the art and process of Artistic Director and co-founder Sue Schroeder and the artists supported by Core Dance. In Breath, Schroeder and her collaborators explore breath as an individual embodied experience and a terrestrial phenomenon. “Through site-specific activation, I chose to access and explore breath in geographies from lush to arid; forests and mountains; open and dense landscapes; in the light of dawn; brightness of day; the subtle light of dusk; and the dark of night,” said Schroeder.

glo, Singing Sun
Thursday through Saturday, December 4 through December 6, noon to 5 p.m. daily (free with museum admission)
National Center for Civil and Human Rights, 100 Ivan Allen Blvd., Atlanta
Founded by a social practice choreographer, glo is known for site-specific performances that often coordinate dancers and bystanders in “people mover” installations. Inspired by Phil Freelon’s architectural design for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Singing Sun engages with how Freelon’s building choreographs the patron’s journey through the histories and stories told within the museum’s exhibits and how it allows the play of natural light to illuminate that journey. Stallings describes Singing Sun as akin to “taking a long stroll with a beautiful stranger. Along the way you might hear voices in multiple languages, remember the taste of your daddy’s sweet potatoes or realize how The John Lewis Voting Rights Act changed your life.”  

Improvisational and Experimental Performances
While all of the events included on this list could be described as innovative in some way, the shows in this category are part of the artists’ ongoing exploration of dance as a medium for experimentation. In these performances, staged encounters between dance and new texts, material constraints, disciplines and technologies create serendipitous opportunities where new ways of being and seeing can emerge for dancers and audiences alike.

Fly on a Wall, Dreambody
Friday, November 21, at 8 p.m. (pay what you can online or at the door)
2450 Piedmont Road NE, Atlanta
In Dreambody, three members of the Fly on a Wall collective — Nicole Johnson, Jimmy Joyner and Sean Nguyen-Hilton — invite the audience into the sometimes messy and often fascinating improvisational mode of collaboration they developed during their 16-day live installation piece Cats in a Library. The original installation took place in the now-defunct MINT Gallery in 2021 as Atlanta and the rest of the world started to emerge from the worst days of pandemic lockdown. Concerned with the body in flux, vulnerable and fluid, undergoing transformation, Dreambody emerges from moment to moment as the artists respond to their immediate, prepared environment and to one another. 

Corian Ellisor, World Hold On
Sunday, November 23, at 6 p.m. (free event)
Goat Farm Arts Center, 1200 Foster St. NW, Atlanta
Corian Ellisor, a faculty member and co-director of the Prime Company at Callanwolde School of Dance, was selected as Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology’s (IPaT) inaugural artist-in-residence. His work often melds dance and theater, using art as activism to create abstract narratives with gesture, drag, music, costumes and storytelling. This interactive performance will showcase the results of his collaboration with researchers and technologists in Georgia Tech’s Craft Lab, an innovative campus maker space uniquely equipped to make soft and flexible materials embedded with technology. 

Fly on a Wall, Channel 13
Thursday, December 4 at 7 p.m.
2450 Piedmont Road NE, Atlanta
This is the last in a series of performances — each coinciding with a full moon — by Nicole Johnson, in which she experiments with channeling and amplifying the resonance and connecting energy between a live performer and her audience. Limited to four audience participants, Channel 13 invites those who “come to receive, remember or simply immerse [themselves] in the energy.”

Tap Dance
Founded in 2018 by Vanessa Zabari, the Tap Rebels were Atlanta’s first professional tap dance company. Since taking their show on the road internationally to Dubai in 2022, the company has been teaching classes but not performing locally. On Sunday, December 7, however, the Tap Rebels are back with the appropriately named The Rhythm Returns at City Dance & Music. The show starts at 1 p.m., and light bites are included with the ticket price.

Flamenco
The rich history and tradition of flamenco is flourishing in Atlanta. A form that builds instant community through dance and music, it originated in bars and public squares, and while flamenco has evolved into a theatrical art form, it still remains connected to those roots. On November 21, December 5 and December 19, Spanish restaurant La Metro at Ponce City Market will host its final three Flamenco Fridays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

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Robin Wharton studied dance at the School of American Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. As an undergraduate at Tulane University in New Orleans, she was a member of the Newcomb Dance Company. In addition to a bachelor of arts in English from Tulane, Robin holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in English, both from the University of Georgia.