During an hour of rehearsals in Atlanta Ballet's Westside studios, John Welker and Nadia Mara made seemingly a thousand minor adjustments as they worked with ballet mistress Dale Shields on their pas de deux. The intensity as they prepared for Atlanta Ballet's Nutcracker kicked up a notch when new artistic director Gennadi Nedvigin stepped into the room and joined the instruction, jumping up often from a folding chair on the side to demonstrate his nuanced suggestions....
