The 2024 Fall Arts Preview: Our picks in dance

ArtsATL staff

August 28, 2024

This fall, the dance world offers us a ballerina’s swan song, neoclassical and contemporary choreography and a fresh look at Mexican heritage.

*Christian Clark in Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre’s* Out of the Box. *(Photo courtesy of Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre)*

Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre launches a fall season featuring new company members and four world premieres with Out of the Box from September 14 through 22 at the company’s white box performance space in Buckhead’s TULA Arts Center. The program includes new work from Shane Urton of the Royal Ballet of Flanders and Jennifer Archibald, award-winning choreographer-in-residence with Cincinnati Ballet. It will also be the farewell performance series for one of the ensemble’s co-founders, Rachel Van Buskirk. She will take her final bows with the company on September 22. From October 17 through November 3, Terminus returns to the Art Farm at Serenbe for Kryptos, which will include a new mystery-themed ballet from company co-founder and Orlando Ballet Rehearsal Director Heath Gill. — RW

Atlanta Ballet opens its fall season September 13 through September 15 with a mixed bill featuring the work of three renowned neoclassical and contemporary choreographers. Harmony of Opposite Tensions is a world premiere from Kiyon Ross, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s associate artistic director and the playful, neoclassical Tu Tu is from dance maker Stanton Welch. Lar Lubovitch’s jazzy contemporary masterpiece Elemental Brubeck completes the program. When Atlanta Ballet last performed Elemental Brubeck in 2020, ArtsATL Editor-At-Large Cynthia Perry described it as “a lush music visualization that blends mid-century social dances like the jitterbug and boogie-woogie with Dave Brubeck’s jazz and classical American jazz dance.” She added: “Lubovitch folds these elements together brilliantly.” — RW

*Photo by Shannel Resto, SJR Photography*

Julio Medina, assistant professor of dance at Emory University, will present a concert, return//de vuelta a los ancestors, featuring Aztec dance, folklórico and contemporary dance inspired by various symbols from the Mexica sunstone. On September 20 and September 21, dancers will take the stage at Emory’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts Dance Studio in work that, according to the choreographer, follows his “journey of reclaiming indigenous identity and reshaping his Mexican heritage.” With vibrant costume design from Atlanta performance and visual artist PhaeMonae, the evening will explore how Medina has begun to integrate symbolism and temporal awareness from his ancestral cosmology into his modern choreographic practice. — RW

More Dance Highlights . . .

Double Exposure at Kennesaw State University’s Dance Theater (Marietta campus) on August 23 and August 24 will showcase two world premieres from nationally emerging choreographers Tristian Griffin and Christian Denice.
Dance Canvas’ Summer Dance Residency choreographers present their final performances at Atlanta Contemporary on September 21.
This year’s Art on The Beltline programming includes a new site-specific dance from artist-in-residence Nadya Zeitlin and Bautanzt Here on September 27, and a dance and visual art work, Amplified Body, from PhaeMonae on September 28 that uses the cicada’s rhythmic life-cycle as a metaphor for the evolution of hip-hop.
Atlanta Chinese Dance Company presents its annual concert, this year titled Everyday Heroes, at Gas South Theater September 28 and September 29.
Monica Hogan Danceworks will host a program of new work from local emerging choreographers alongside Hogan’s This earth to catch me and the premiere of her Freefall on October 5 and October 6 at the Emory Performing Arts Studio.
In Saltarella Reconsidered on Novermber 1 through November 3, D. Patton White and Beacon Dance offer a re-imagining of White’s first evening-length work. It will expand on the original choreography and situate it in Beacon’s current home, B-Complex.
Fall for Fall, the annual festival organized by Catherine Messina, returns for a fifth year on October 19 and October 20.
With a new on-site work, Braiding Time, Memory and Water, Core Dance will respond to the history and geography of Powers Island in Sandy Springs, part of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, October 19 and October 20.
The National Ballet of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Shumka Dancers tour lands in Atlanta on October 20 at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
Emory Dance will bring Doug Varone and Dancers to the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts on October 25.
Spivey Hall’s Young People’s Concert series will include on November 13 a performance from Full Radius Dance of Together, based on American author, disability rights advocate and political activist Helen Keller’s quote, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”