Houston-based choreographer Dwayne Cook in rehearsal with Dance Canvas performers. (Photo courtesy of Dwayne Cook)

The 2026 Spring Arts Preview: Our picks in Dance

ArtsATL staff

March 4, 2026

Places, please! Atlanta’s 2026 dance season kicks off with a number of invigorating performances this spring.

Mixed-rep Performances

In addition to Atlanta Ballet‘s Golden Hour (April 3-5), which will present world premieres from Yuri Possokhov and choreographer-in-residence Claudia Schrier, Atlanta audiences have a number of opportunities this spring to sample the work of regionally and nationally emerging choreographers in mixed-rep programs from Beacon Dance, Dance Canvas, Fly on a Wall, and Full Radius Dance.

First up on March 20 and 21 is the 18th annual Dance Canvas Choreographer Career Development Initiative showcase at the Rialto Center for the Arts. The CCDI draws applicants from around the country, and this year’s program will include work from Maia Jones, Nia Lancelin, and Cecily Davis of Atlanta, Christina Carlos who splits her time between Atlanta and Chicago, KHILA based in both Atlanta and Philadelphia, Dwayne Cook from Houston, Jerigray Eduav of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Gabriel Speller from Fort Worth, Texas. On Saturday, April 21, Dance Canvas will also screen Dance Canvas: on Film 2026, featuring five films — by Joshua Cleveland, Billy Hawkains III, Diana Kim, Andie Knudson, and Valkyrie Yao — that expand the expressive potential of dance through visual storytelling and innovative filmmaking.

On March 27-28, Fly on a Wall‘s Excuse the Art, which provides mentoring and support for performance works in various stages of the artistic process, returns after a year’s hiatus for its fifth run, this time at Fly on a Wall’s new location at Lindbergh Station in Buckhead.

Alongside a new work from Beacon Dance‘s artistic director D. Patton White, the fourth installment of Moving Bodies / Moving Hearts / Moving Minds on April 10-12 at the company’s home in the B Complex will show premieres by Atlanta-based choreographers Bibby Agbabiaka, Lyrric Jackson and Merryn McKeough. All of these artists work at the intersection of art and activism, and White established this annual performance series as an opportunity to generate community and dialogue through dance. Audiences are invited to join the presenting artists for talk-backs after each performance.

Full Radius Dance artistic director Douglas Scott founded the Modern Atlanta Dance Festival, the city’s first juried festival dedicated to contemporary concert dance in 1993, and the MAD Festival, hosted annually by Full Radius Dance and running this year on June 12 and 13 at the Emory Performing Arts Studio, has since become an anchor of Atlanta’s spring dance season.

University Performances and Concerts

The spring dance calendar also includes annual concerts from the strong dance programs at Atlanta-area universities. These shows feature dancers who are on the cusp of professional careers after years of formal training, many of whom will go on to perform in or create work for the Dance Canvas CCDI or MAD Festival, or join companies like Hubbard Street Dance Theater and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater after graduation.

Opportunities to see the next generation of dance talent trained in Atlanta include public performances by Spelman College students in T. Lang’s Performance Repertory living classroom, responding to art happening around town. On March 20, they will be at the Alliance Theatre in connection with Fires in Ohio. In April, the students will engage with Thornton Dial’s work at the Johnson Lowe gallery on April 17 and an exhibition curated by Karen Comer Lowe at the Atlanta Contemporary on April 18. The Spelman Dance Theatre spring concert will take place on May 1-3 at Spelman’s Center for Innovation and the Arts Prince Theatre.

The dance programs at Brenau University, Emory University, and Kennesaw State University will all present spring concerts in April. The bill for Brenau’s DE/CIPHER: Faculty and Guest Artist Concert (April 3-4, Hosch Theatre, John S. Burd Center for the Performing Arts at Brenau University) includes a new piece by New York-based choreographer Chris Bloom who worked with Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre’s re-launch of Wabi Sabi last fall. The Emory Dance Company Spring Concert (April 15-18, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts) and KSU Dance Company Student Dance Concert Series (April 22-25) will both feature work from student choreographers.

Tristan Koepke: Big Boy Dance

On April 10 and 11, Tristan Koepke, a choreographer based in Portland, Maine, whose creative works are collected as Big Boy Dance, will bring the evening-length Bunk Beds at Fly on a Wall’s performance and creative space in Buckhead. Drawing inspiration from Andie Nordgren’s The Road to Relationship Anarchy, Bunk Beds builds upon Koepke’s There’s Only One Bed (2023) and There’s More Than One Bed (2024). The piece explores the romantic and creative partnership between the multi-disciplinary artists Merce Cunningham and John Cage, offering an alternative to conventional histories that obscure both their queerness and radicalism. The show premiered in 2025 at Cove Street Arts gallery in Portland in April of last year, and it includes a film installation and material that directly references rehearsal sketches from Cunningham’s Pictures and scores from Cage’s Song Books.