Rose Shields as Baba Yaga in Kristyn McGeehan's "Into the Dark Wood." (Photos by Will Day)

As Baba Yaga, Shields’ earthbound solo unraveled like a tangle on the floor. She spun in crouched positions, flipped onto her elbows, kicked up her legs and crept forward on her hands, her head and shoulders revolving wildly. She dived into inverted turns as one crooked leg cut jagged slices in the air. Creeping along the stage, she grasped the feet of an unsuspecting Heroine (Cara O’Grady), clawed her way onto O’Grady’s back, manipulated her like a puppet and perched on her shoulders and thrust her arms upward in evil triumph.

It was choreographer and director Kristyn McGeehan’s first full-length work, an ambitious experiment for the young founding company member. For the past six years, McGeehan has helped Joanna Brooks build the company’s reputation and attract a strong ensemble, culminating last season in Brooks’ acclaimed “Blackbird,” a masterfully crafted, courageous work about child sex trafficking. But when a foot injury left Brooks convalescing last winter, McGeehan assumed more responsibility. When Brooks announced her decision to apply to film school, the transition seemed natural; they had already planned to give McGeehan a full program for “Into the Dark Wood.” Whether she could pull off an evening-length show was another question.

Sally O’Grady danced the Heroine with emotional resonance, and Stephen Loch made for a slick Fox.

McGeehan’s “Dark Wood” explores three dark fairy-tale characters: the cold, heartless Ice Queen, pulled from a Hans Christian Andersen story, who separates two young lovers out of jealousy and lust; the power-hungry Baba Yaga; and the smooth, seductive serial killer Fox. In each story, a Heroine evades the evil character’s grasp and finds her strength, independence and freedom of spirit.

Potentially a powerful expressionistic work, it fell short due to a few artistic choices: the music and the tendency to rely on jazz dance conventions rather than dig deeper to discover each character’s true and essential form. The music, though written by several composers, sounded much the same: lots of flowing and hypnotic melodies on piano and strings. It gave the characters a glossy finish, and this diminished their potential rawness, power and depth. Certain movements — the Ice Queen’s repeated extensions, a tendency to throw in multiple turns for no apparent reason and oft-used partnering configurations — hinted at some of the “contemporary” jazz dance we see on television competitions. But this courageous, ambitious and imaginative work showed off its dancers’ technical and expressive gifts.

The dance theater collaboration’s elements were simple, spare and appropriate. Christian Vick’s set worked well: barren red branches hung in the upper stage space to the audience’s left; upstage to the right hung a swath of fabric, dyed blocks of teal and plum used to delineate space in each story. Vocalist Angela Pearl introduced each section with a few lines of Laurie Zolkosky’s evocative verse, inviting the audience to venture, alone, into the dark forest of the unknown.

A covetous Ice Queen intercepted two young lovers; she beckoned, rising into arabesque turns, wielding power with high kicks over Joe Futral’s icy shards of light cast on the floor. Her two Fiends (Cara and Sally O’Grady) groped along the floor, hands clenched, shoulders raised, marvelously grotesque, trapping poor Suitor (Stephen Loch) in their web. As Heroine, Sarah Kelly Kerr danced exquisitely. If transitions between some of the more difficult steps needed a bit of ironing out, it hardly mattered; all eyes seemed to fall on her enchanting, radiant face.

Particularly striking was the third tale, of Fox, from the Brothers Grimm. Loch played Fox as slick seducer-turned-murderer. It became a life-or-death situation for the Heroine, danced by Sally O’Grady, in Tanya Geiger’s slinky red halter dress, with beautifully clear poise and emotional resonance. They danced a heated duet to the music’s suspenseful pulse and sultry saxophone melody. After falling for Fox, she discovers his former lovers’ bodies; as he turns into a ruthless killer, she realizes that she’s fighting for her life. In the end, she wins her life but loses her love. Delicious irony.

Dancers P. Gamino, T. Lee and D. Hansel in Atlanta Ballet's "Home in 7," which captured moments in the city's history and culture. (Photo by Charlie McCullers)

Whether fueled by patronage or pure passion, dance thrived. In February, Atlanta Ballet announced repertoire by several major internationally noted choreographers and co-commissioned Twyla Tharp’s “The Princess and the Goblin,” set for a premiere in February 2012. The Ferst Center for the Arts capped its first ARTech residency program with a U.S. premiere by choreographer and media artist Jonah Bokaer. In July, the Rialto Center for the Arts announced its ambitious, weeklong “Off the EDGE” series of community-based arts initiatives, which is set to take place in January with contemporary works by seven nationally and internationally known choreographers as its focus.

Dance-maker Lauri Stallings’ collaborative performance platform gloATL gave its first performance at the Goat Farm’s Goodson Yard in February and established the century-old warehouse as its new home in April. Its settling there helped make the Goat Farm artists’ community one of the city’s trendy new centers of creativity.

Public arts initiatives proliferated. Art on the BeltLine, Elevate: Art Above Underground and Flux Projects presented site-specific performances by about a dozen local troupes, inviting audiences to experience the city’s public spaces in new ways. With dance increasingly in the spotlight, and with an eye on its audiences, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center added dance to its programming initiatives with performances by Dance Truck, Gardenhouse Dance and gloATL.

Dance Truck expanded its grass-roots mission of “bringing dance to the people.” What began as small-scale performances inside a truck grew to the grand scale, community-building “PLOT” at the Goat Farm in July. Also in the summer, Dance Truck Artistic Director Malina Rodriguez co-founded The Lucky Penny with choreographer Blake Beckham. This presenting organization, aimed at fostering collaboration among experimental artists both here and elsewhere, staged its first event in November.

All told, more than 50 professional dance performances filled the 2011 Atlanta calendar. Here are a few standouts, listed chronologically. All were locally produced and reflected something unique toward giving the city a sense of identity and advancing the artistic progress of dance here.

“Flyin’ West.” In March, Ballethnic Dance Company presented an adaptation of Pearl Cleage’s play of the same title for the ballet stage. Set in Nicodemus, Kansas, in the 1890s, the new, full-length ballet brought a piece of American history — the migration of African-Americans from the American South to the West — to new audiences.

Mitchell Kelly in Daryl Foster's gripping "Foster Care," part of LIFT's memorable season. (Photo by Tara-Lynne Pixley)

LIFT. In May, LIFT Artistic Director Daryl Foster brought hip-hop culture to modern dance on the concert stage. In this second annual all-male production, he presented his emotionally gripping “Foster Care,” set to Atlanta student choreographer Timothy Jones’ poem about growing up in the foster care system. Several Atlanta-based dance-makers shared a program with guest choreographers Andre Zachery and Rodney Brown, offering an array of works by turns playfully aggressive, brutally honest, poignant and poetic.

“Home in 7.” Atlanta Ballet has a history of teaming up with musical artists from the Southeastern region. Created by choreographer Amy Seiwert, spoken-word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph and violinist-composer Daniel Bernard Roumain, this May premiere was one of Atlanta Ballet’s most synergistic collaborations in recent years. Joseph’s poetry, inspired by his years as a college student in Atlanta, overlay images, memories and dreams. These merged with the tensions of Seiwert’s sculpted, architectural style, to Roumain’s soulful strains on electronic violin. The work brought forward aspects of the city’s history and culture — from the Atlanta Braves to Southern belles, through tragedy into triumph — and captured its ephemeral but indomitable spirit.

“Liquid Culture.” If gloATL’s “Chapter III” dug into deeper, more personal sources of expression, its four-part “Liquid Culture” in the summer branched farther out into the city’s public spaces. The series of performance installations — at Sol LeWitt’s “54 Columns” in Freedom Park, the Lindbergh MARTA station, Little Five Points and the intersection of 15th and Peachtree Streets — heightened the effects of these urban spaces (enchanting, whimsical, uncomfortable, dangerous) on the people who passed through them. The results were meaningful aesthetic experiences between performers and audiences, shaped by Stallings’ choreography and the city’s architecture.

GloATL, Robert Spano and Sonic Generator performed Kaija Saarhiaho’s ballet “Maá.” (Photo by Thom Baker)

“Maá.” The second full performance of Kaija Saarhiaho’s ballet since its 1991 premiere brought more firsts for gloATL. “Maá” was gloATL’s Symphony Hall debut and its first collaboration with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra conductor Robert Spano. The evening-length work, performed by Sonic Generator, reconfigured the concert hall as an in-the-round performance space: video projections surrounded a stage partly covered with turf. It seemed of the caliber of work seen in major cities — the Brooklyn Academy of Music comes to mind — but the artists and concert hall were unique to Atlanta. Stallings’ movement language, coming from deeply rooted, angular postures, recalled archaic sculpture and seemed to evoke ancient mysteries. As images of ocean swells engulfed audience, dancers, musicians and Spano, it became clear that the essence of life is in rhythmic movement.

But at Thursday evening’s opening performance, there wasn’t a dull moment, and scarcely a calm one; the ballet rushed along at a 21st-century clip. Clocking in at just under two hours (including a 25-minute intermission), it was as fast and upbeat as a Pixar movie, its story line crafted to engage even the youngest, media-saturated minds from start to finish.

Christian Clark and Rachel Van Buskirk, whose performance sparkled with confidence and warmth. (Photos by Charlie McCullers)

Tchaikovsky’s score, composed at the height of his powers of orchestration, sped along under Craig Kier’s baton. The young maestro, conducting this weekend, upped the tempi on numerous sections; the dancers quickly jumped to the challenge. Gary Sheldon, an Atlanta Ballet Orchestra veteran, will take the podium from Tuesday, December 13, through the final performance on Christmas Eve.

A new backdrop for Act II introduced vivid new colors, revealing the famous snow scene, viewed from the opposite direction, in springtime. With the production newly lit by Robert Hand, the backdrop glowed in verdant green, teal and violet, warmed by a glowing magenta sky. Iridescent, glittering costumes in pink, mauve and burgundy seemed to pop out of the landscape — all designed to pull an audience in.

And with just cause. Atlanta Ballet relies on its annual “Nutcracker” for about 60 percent of its annual revenues. The economy remains precarious, and other popular holiday shows — from the Rockettes to the Grinch to a multimedia equine extravaganza — remain stiff competition. Because Atlanta Ballet’s economic stability depends on the success of this annual production, the music’s driving speed may reflect a kind of urgency beneath the surface.

It was a pace befitting mischief-makers such as Nicholas, Marya’s obstreperous younger brother, played by Kevin Silverstein, who nearly stole Act I, knocking a tray out of a servant’s hands, breaking up an intimate moment between Marya (Alessa Rogers) and her father (Jonah Hooper) when she receives her first pair of pointe shoes, and, later, attacking Marya’s Nutcracker with a toy rat’s head.

The pace gave this year’s 18th-century-style Meissen dolls an interesting new dimension. Dancers Peng-Yu Chen and Jacob Bush gave these charming, life-size mechanical dancing dolls a kind of jerky, robotic severity. This idea carried forward into the battle scene, as the ordered troop of manufactured tin soldiers, led by the stiff-limbed Nutcracker, fought a pack of wild, unruly rats, led first by Nicholas and later by a tall, abhorrent Rat King. At the battle scene’s pivotal moment, Marya faced the Rat King in combat, knocked the sword out of his hand and stabbed him. But not until Nicholas apologized to his sister, and she embraced him, did it become clear that the crux of her heroism was in her act of forgiveness.

During the snow scene, Georgia Youth Choir voices gently pealed as a corps of dancers whirled through flurries of turns, reaching into luscious, spiraling diagonal lines. But the heart of the evening, in performance quality, was Abigail Tan, as the Snow Queen and later as the Dew Drop Fairy, just two years in the United States after training in the Philippines, and in her second year with Atlanta Ballet.

Warmth emanated from her upper torso, streaming outward through her shoulder blades and fingertips; her arms opened and lifted, blossoming with breathiness and a bit of earthiness, as her legs struck long-lined poses with calm authority. Partnered with Tommy Panto, to the tranquil sound of the youth choir voices, Tan’s face glowed with joy and serenity.

Tara Lee and Jonah Hooper danced the Arabian duet with professional finesse and passion.

As the Sugar Plum Fairy, Rachel Van Buskirk began tentatively, but her confidence grew as her steps picked up speed. Crisp, adagio poses whipped into circles of tight turns. Supported by Christian Clark, she pivoted and plunged into a fish dive, performing one spectacular lift after another with promising warmth and freshness.

Tara Lee, who has danced the Arabian duet hundreds of times, nailed every balanced extension, every sculpted overhead lift, with professional finesse. As she connected with the audience and her partner, Jonah Hooper, she imbued the duet’s dazzling, spinning lifts with fire and sensuality, arching, coiling and wrapping around Hooper’s back. Lifted high into the air, as if floating on a magic carpet, she commanded him forward with radiant power and star quality.

That’s the nature of “The Nutcracker.” The passion is often rediscovered in the process of the dance. No matter how calculated the conception — to hold audience attention, to forward the story — and no matter how eye-popping its decor, the production has heart.

D. Patton White is one of many who have shaped Atlanta’s modern and contemporary dance community over the past 30 years.

He began dancing at Emory University while studying psychology and philosophy; he joined the Decatur-DeKalb Civic Ballet in the mid-1980s, shortly before that company moved to Decatur’s Beacon Hill Arts Center and changed its name to Beacon Dance Company. White became its artistic director in 1990.

Archival photos of Beacon Dance Company.

He’s known for layered, multifaceted works, marked by human compassion and a non-elitist philosophy that includes performers of many ages and backgrounds, their personal stories woven into the work. Last year, White created a short 20-year video retrospective, available here.

In 2004 White presented the Mapping Project, a series of site-specific, multidisciplinary, community-based performances in 12 parks and nature centers throughout DeKalb County. From 1999 to 2002, his Elemental Project explored the elements water, earth, fire and air. This season, White is reconstructing all four of those works. He’s also planning to bring together a panel of local contemporary dance pioneers for deeper conversation about the community’s history. Details on that will be announced at a later date.

Recently, White spoke frankly about how Atlanta’s dance scene has changed, the challenges local dance artists face, and how best to survive over the long haul. On a fall afternoon, we sat in front of a big picture window in White’s apartment near Emory, its walls painted in vibrant shades of aqua and marigold and decked with textiles and artwork.

Cynthia Perry: How would you describe the contemporary dance community at the time you started dancing?

D. Patton White: When I came on the scene in the mid-1980s, there was a modern dancer-choreographer named Meli Kaye who had had a company for maybe 15 to 20 years called Company Kaye. She was also a mime artist, so the company had both elements.

A lot of people were working in the late 1970s and early 1980s with a variety of organizations. Several worked with Meli and her company; some of them eventually founded their own companies; some did pickup groups and performances at the Arts Festival of Atlanta. A couple of choreographers, Dee Wagner and Pat Floyd, combined forces and did a lot of work on their own.

Meli had danced with Doris Humphrey, and that style fit perfectly with me — not the angst-y Graham or the kill-your-back Horton. It was a nice, flowing, solid technique. She became a mentor for me as she had been for many people in the city.

Then you have the Dance Unit, led by Leslie Uhl. [This was an interdisciplinary group made up of dancers, performance artists, musicians and visual artists and was part of the Forrest Avenue Consortium.]

Then Lee Harper came into town. [In 1970 Harper joined the Atlanta Contemporary Dance Company, founded in 1948, and she formed Lee Harper and Dancers in 1980.] She had danced with Alvin Ailey, so her work had that style. I danced with her for a while.

You then have people like Douglas Scott, who formed Full Radius; originally it was Dance Force. I took over Beacon in 1990, which was about the same time Douglas formed Full Radius.

My first goal had been to model it after this group called ISO, people who had worked with Momix and had all formed this touring company: Daniel Ezralow, Ashley Roland, Morleigh Steinberg and one other dancer. They were phenomenal performers, but they also had a really great wit about them. I just thought, “what an intelligent model to try to emulate.”

But the reality became clear that touring is competitive and difficult. So I shifted my goals to become more embedded in the community. About that time, in the late 1980s, Jimmy Carter started the Atlanta Project. The intention was to address intown blight: the poverty and hopelessness in the area bounded by I-20.

Arts in the Atlanta Project was a grant program for art projects in the targeted communities. That was when I started doing the community-based work that I’ve been doing ever since. We did a couple of projects in a senior high-rise living facility. We had them share stories from their past, and we used that information as inspiration for site-specific pieces in their backyard area.

Perry: What were some of the events that shaped the local dance community as it is today?

White: There was the Dance Coalition of Metro Atlanta, a service organization for the dance community. It was multi-style — [for] every company that existed in the city, individual choreographers and dancers.

For a number of years they produced the Winter Dance Festival — everybody who was a part of the coalition could be on the program. That was probably in the mid-to-late 1970s, so it may have lasted for about 10 years or so, at least until 1986 or 1987.

When the Dance Coalition went away, Dancers’ Collective, directed by JoAnne McGhee, picked up the festival and focused on modern, or contemporary, dance. They started producing Atlanta Dance on the Loose, an adjudicated festival. If you were selected, it was a big deal. And then when Dancers’ Collective went away, Douglas Scott valued it and decided to start producing the Modern Atlanta Dance Festival.

Also, Several Dancers CORE wrote the grant to the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund to do the Atlanta Dance Initiative, which strengthened 10 different dance organizations in real, sustaining ways. Not all of them have been able to last, but key ones — Ballethnic, CORE, Beacon, Full Radius — have. And Moving in the Spirit, too, I think; it has no peer in the city in terms of its ability to attract funding. It’s amazing, the impact that they’re having on the communities they work with.

The third major event was the Olympics, which had a devastating effect on the dance community. You have stars in everybody’s eyes, but it drove a lot of locals out of town; they were no longer arts patrons for that summer. The funding agencies, both in the public and the corporate sector, gave huge sums of money to support the Arts Olympiad, all organizations and artists from out of town. This meant funding for local entities was down dramatically for the next three or four years. For some, it was the nail in the coffin. It took Beacon many years to recover.

I got real clear after that to be realistic about my budgeting and to not expect anything until that cash is in hand. You know, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Perry: It’s not easy to build a dance career here — there’s limited funding, limited jobs. But you’ve managed to forge your own path. What challenges have you faced?

White: Most who work in the modern or contemporary dance idiom here would say that even now, it’s hard to get an audience that seeks experimental or cutting-edge work. The other challenge is that you have people who want to dance and make work, but not much support. So you get a lot of people doing work for free. And even if it’s not completely free, it’s tantamount to being free. And how that impacts the artists is to continually drain them. It also sets up this situation where people don’t expect that they have to pay dancers, or they don’t expect that they have to pay much for a ticket to a performance. So you have this strange situation where you can’t pay the dancers more because people won’t pay more to come see the dance. So which could possibly come first? At the end of the day, the funding has to come from somewhere.

Perry: How have you seen the dance community change over the last 30 years?

White: The biggest difference is this phenomenon that everybody decides they have to form their own dance company. As opposed to having a few larger groups, there seem to be a lot of smaller groups [that often] tend to be younger folks just coming out of college that feel like, “In order for me to do the work I want to, I have to form my own company.” And that’s not necessarily the case. What I have witnessed is that there’s a whole bunch of companies for a while and they all go away and then the next crop comes in. If you really want to spend your time dealing with the headaches of having a company, then more power to you. But if it’s just about making art, there are ways to work with existing companies to make that happen.

The Dancers’ Collective was founded as a true collective. It was a group of about 10 choreographers who pooled their resources [and renovated an old movie theater on Euclid Avenue to become what is now 7 Stages]. The fact that that space exists to this day is testament to what coming together and working together can do.

Perry: Site-specific work has been going on in Atlanta for some time, and you’ve been a major part of that. How did that get started?

White: I started after seeing site-specific performances in New York. I’d seen Dancing in the Streets on television [and live] at Wave Hill. But also being a part of Alternate Roots, where as part of the annual meeting a lot of work is created, wherever the meeting happens to be. I found it fascinating and wanted to try it myself.

I’m a firm believer that you can find art wherever you are. It’s about your frame of mind. Just looking out the window and watching the leaves fall — it’s like this gorgeous performance is happening. One time I was driving along the highway and came across these signs that were almost like the old Burma-Shave signs. Along the highway they’d place these signs, a slogan per sign, every couple of hundred feet. But this series of signs was an art project. All of a sudden I encountered this grand work of public art, and something in me just clicked and I thought, “I would rather be out there just creating art in the public realm, and if people just happen upon it, that’s great.” We don’t always have to get our audience to come see it. There’s an exciting synergy that happens when it’s the unexpected.

LIFT is among the local artists chosen for the Off the Edge performance series in January. (Photo by Lynne Cymone)

The Atlanta artists and works chosen for the series are SCAD artist Bernard J. Jackson’s group performance work “Water Wall Tango”; Casey Lynch, who will build a time-based sculpture; a new creation by Full Radius Dance on the theme of surviving survival; Haverty Object Group and “Ritual Objects” for a storefront installation; Georgia Tech School of Architecture Professor Judy Gordon Buck, who’ll create a scale-bending structure; LIFT, which will contribute a multidisciplinary creation; a new work by Out of Hand Theater; a piece by Staibdance; and a new creation by John Welker of Atlanta Ballet. “The artists selected will be presenting timely and transformative works,” said Edge/PUBLIC curator Paul Boshears in making the announcement.

In addition to the local artists, Off the EDGE will bring several nationally and internationally noted contemporary dance groups — including Lar Lubovitch, Kiegwin and Company and Andrea Miller’s Gallim Dance — to town for performance, dialogue and artistic exchange. Backed largely by the Charles Loridans Foundation, Off the EDGE will be presented in partnership with the Rialto Center for the Arts, Kennesaw State University and gloATL.

The nine local works in the Edge/PUBLIC component of Off the EDGE will begin “in canon” in and around Woodruff Park, said Off the EDGE curator Lauri Stallings, and will run in tandem for about an hour and a half before guest artists perform at the Rialto. The “curatorial thread” of the performance series is the idea that “the moving of things permits the formation of identities,” said Stallings, best known for her cutting-edge work with gloATL.

Full Radius Dance will create a new survival-themed work for its Off the Edge performance.

During the past 20 years, comparable dance and movement-based arts festivals have sprung up in Houston, Seattle, Chicago and other cities. Though each is unique to its city, most share similar aims: to connect local artists and audiences with contemporary dance artists who are working on the international scene, to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration, and to expose their somewhat isolated arts communities to these artists’ edgy ways and means. Off the Edge is distinguished by its ties to artists linked to Stallings’ alma mater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and to contemporary Israeli dance influences associated with her mentor, choreographer Ohad Naharin.

These out-of-town artists will give local audiences context for Stallings’ work with gloATL, a collaborative performance platform that has caused many of Atlanta’s creative people to rethink the possibilities for temporary art in public spaces. With the scale, polish and accessibility of public spectacles, Stallings’ works — grounded in an evolving, visceral movement style that’s classically based, internally sourced and driven by today’s unpredictable rhythms — have an emotional sting. They point out human vulnerability in urban landscapes by putting dancers into risky situations — say, in front of Little Five Points loiterers or in the middle of a busy intersection. Other Atlanta-based dancemakers have preceded Stallings’ site-specific works, but none have attracted the crowds or attention she has gained.

Stallings’ initial blueprint for Off the Edge suggested that it would be organized around the image of a human body as metaphor for the geographical city. Bringing these local groups together aims to draw the city’s creative energies from diffuse locations, or extremities, toward the heart of the city: Five Points, adjacent to Woodruff Park. There, the artists will aim to activate and energize the public imagination and, in theory, entice the public to follow, in Pied Piper fashion, through the streets and into the Rialto for what one hopes will be a transformative experience with cutting-edge contemporary dance. Whether these performances can galvanize an audience — as gloATL has often done — is yet to be seen. Stay tuned.

The idea that dreams really can come true lies at the heart of “The Nutcracker” and accounts for its popularity as an American holiday tradition. Loosely based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 tale “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” the story — told from a child’s point of view and performed largely by children — offers themes that the young (and young at heart) can connect with: sibling rivalry, heroism in the midst of a battle between toy soldiers and mice, and a journey into a magical realm. There, young Clara (Marie, Marya) discovers the beauty and variety that the world has to offer through dance — and a sparkling fairy queen.

The Snowflakes scene in the Atlanta Ballet's production. (Photo by C. McCullers)

“The Nutcracker” tends to attract the largest audiences of the season for most American ballet companies, making this chestnut an economic necessity. It’s necessary, too, to keep the perennial ballet fresh. In recent years, Atlanta Ballet Artistic Director John McFall has made a few subtle changes. This season the choreography has changed little, but a new backdrop will replace Act 2’s familiar castle in the air. Robert Hand, Atlanta Ballet’s lighting director, explains that the new design sprang from the question, “Where would you want to be if you were in the middle of winter?”

The new scene is designed to look as if you’d just walked through Act 1’s Snowflakes scene, gone over a hill and turned around to see the same scene. Miraculously, it is re-awakened with the blooms and flowers of spring. Gone are the muted tones and pastels; the backdrop, partly opaque and partly translucent, is saturated with color. And only the sky lights up, Hand says, in order to create a greater sense of depth and perspective.

Costume designer April McCoy has created new costumes for Act 2’s shepherdesses and Arabian dancers. Also new this year, the Georgia Youth Choir will sing with the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra during the Snowflakes scene.

Meanwhile, the Gwinnett Ballet Theatre also is sprucing up its version of “The Nutcracker,” as it celebrates the production’s 30th anniversary. The pre-professional company will offer 11 public performances and five outreach shows that will feature new backdrops, sets and costumes. Its new artistic director, Jaime Robtison, promises to bring fresh choreography and insights to her first production as the GBT’s leader.

Erin Sipsy as the Sugar Plum Fairy in Gwinnett Ballet Theatre's "The Nutcracker." (Photo by Richard Calmes)

The GBT Orchestra, conducted by Predrag Gosta, will accompany the dancers for the last eight shows. This is one of the few productions of “The Nutcracker” in metro Atlanta this season that will offer live musical accompaniment. Audience favorites such as magician Bill Kress will return as Herr Drosselmeyer, with live birds and illusions in tow. Local celebrities will perform interchangeably as the comical Mother Ginger, a second-act figure whose huge skirt hides little dancers who come out to perform.

Here is a selected roundup of the many “Nutcracker” performances to choose from in the Atlanta area:

Atlanta Ballet. December 8-24. www.atlantaballet.com
New lighting, a new backdrop for Act 2, and the Georgia Youth Choir will update this lavish production at the Fox Theatre.

Atlanta Festival Ballet Company. December 10-11. www.atlantafestivalballet.com
AFB aims to present the nostalgic tale with energy and drama in an innocent, child-friendly presentation.

Ballethnic. November 17-20. www.ferstcenter.gatech.edu
In its 18th annual production of “The Urban Nutcracker” — Ballethnic’s twist on the holiday tale, set in Atlanta in the 1940s – the company will blend classical ballet with jazz, modern, African and other ethnic dance forms set to Tchaikovsky’s score, along with adapted music by L. Gerard Reid.

Georgia Ballet. December 2-4. www.georgiaballet.org
On December 3, the company will present its fifth annual “Celebrity Nutcracker.” In this special event, community leaders will join the regular cast in a performance to raise money for the YWCA of Northwest Georgia.

Georgia Metropolitan Dance Theatre. November 26-27. www.georgiametrodance.org
After receiving the 2011 Ovation Award for Outstanding Ensemble Arts Organization last month, the GMDT, previously known as the Ruth Mitchell Dance Theatre, will present its holiday performance while hosting a toy drive with Toys for Tots.

Gwinnett Ballet Theatre. December 2-18. www.gwinnettballet.org
GBT will premiere its new artistic director’s choreography and present fresh sets and costumes.

Metropolitan Ballet Theatre. December 16-18. www.metropolitanballet.org
Maniya Barredo, former Atlanta Ballet principal dancer, will present a classic rendition of the story. The pre-professional ballet company also will offer a “Land of Sweets Tea” on December 17.

Northeast Atlanta Ballet. November 25-27. www.northeastatlantaballet.org
This elaborate, family-friendly production features Tchaikovsky’s score played live by the Gwinnett Symphony Orchestra.

– List compiled by Chelsea Thomas

It’s likely that New York-based artist Jill Sigman will bring a gust of fresh air, as will choreographer Tahni Holt, from Portland, Oregon. They’ll be part of an eclectic lineup of events involving dance, visual art, film, literature, spontaneous art criticism, community dialogue, workshops, a food truck and a Friday night dance party. Tickets are $11 and will be available at the door. For the schedule, click here.

Jill Sigman: "Hut #3, Troy, N.Y." (Photo by Peter Shapiro)

The Lucky Penny was founded last summer when Blake Beckham and Malina Rodriguez, now its co-artistic directors, saw an unfilled niche in the local arts scene: a need to support creation and presentation of all kinds of contemporary, experimental art and to mix audiences for different art forms, fostering the cross-pollination that keeps an arts community vital.

One of the challenges of sustaining experimental performance art in Atlanta, Beckham says, is a tendency toward isolation. Unlike New York or Portland or other cities, there’s little funding and limited opportunities for performance and exchange. So she and Rodriguez work to connect local artists with their peers in other places — through hands-on exchange, to help integrate Atlanta artists into a larger network.

They’ve brought in Holt, who will stage “Untitled Is a Choice” with the luminous Atlanta-based dancer Helen Hale. Beckham described the solo as ironic and humorous, using a stripped-down, postmodern vocabulary. It brings the performer to a state of “real, raw abandon.” The work will include a candid conversation between performer and audience that poses questions about what makes a “good” dance and what role an audience plays in that determination.

Tahni Holt (Photo courtesy of the Lucky Penny)

Sigman, whom Beckham and Rodriguez hope to bring back for a full performance project in the future, has just returned from a two-month residency in Oslo, Norway, where she created the latest in her Hut Project. (Watch a video here.) This series of site-specific installations has blended movement, sculpture and design with focus on themes of shelter, sustainability, real estate and apocalypse. For each project, Sigman has built a hut from found materials unique to each location, choreographed movement within the environment she’s created, served tea and engaged in community dialogue with people who come to watch.

On Friday, she’ll host a dialogue about the Oslo project, with video, while serving tea inside a truck. On Saturday, she’ll offer a four-hour workshop, creating a structure for participants based on her own performance framework, with cycles of activities involving movement, mapping a space, coming to be at home in a space physically, and activities associated with home, such as washing, planting, cooking and talking. They’ll investigate how these kinds of activities can change the energy of a space and the way in which people inhabit the space and relate to one another.

In an interview earlier this week, Sigman spoke frankly about her work.

Cynthia Perry: We see a lot of mainstream modern dance companies in Atlanta, like Pilobolus, Paul Taylor and Alvin Ailey, etc. What does your work bring to a community that these companies don’t?

Jill Sigman: I’ve been in Norway for two months working on a hut there in the Norwegian Opera House. There’s a broad and diverse audience coming through there because that building is an architectural tourist destination. To some extent, I was performing for them — I was building on site for about two weeks, and I was talking with them and engaging with them as part of the process leading up to the performances. So there was a lot of process that was not really so different from performance. It led me to think about what is valuable about this kind of thing. There’s movement involved, but it doesn’t stop with presentation of movement. It’s about choreographing experience. These different ways of working open up different kinds of intersection for people. It’s not just about being weird or pushing people’s boundaries; it’s more about saying, “How is it that I can invite you in?”

For some people, seeing movement is the easiest way to do that, and for other people, being invited to sit in a hut and have a cup of tea is actually more of an open door.

It’s about expanding the repertoire of ways to invite people to have an experience. And what’s the value of that? If they’re engaging with people, if they’re creating relationships and connection, they can begin to think about these things or feel about these things. They can start to ask questions, like “What do I throw away?” or “What do I think about where this world is going?” or “What do I want from my community?” And there’s this kind of openness to start to go off the map.

Having a repertoire of different ways of reaching out to people and nudging people is really important right now. First of all, not everyone is going to come into a theater. There are people who don’t have the financial means; there are people who don’t have the interest. Secondly, people are on overload. They’re media-saturated right now. So how do we cut through that? I think we need more than just a traditional stage.

It’s a way of saying art can be about more than just beautiful, muscular bodies on stage. I’m not saying we don’t need that, but how can the art be more than that and open up more possibilities for experience and connection?

Jill Sigman: "Our Lady of Detritus" (Photo by Margot Perron)

Perry: Can you give an example of how your work is more than that?

Sigman: Well, there are many [laughs]. I spent about six weeks riding around the boroughs of Manhattan in a cart full of Cheetos. This was a performance installation that I did, almost two years ago, called “Our Lady of Detritus.” It’s the beginning of [a series of works] with trash and found materials, about issues of waste management. This came from working in Bushwick, actually. My studio is there, and [the area is] so toxic. There’s so much trash, and it’s great because I find so many materials, but on the other hand it’s like, wait a minute, you know, what is this? And it just started seeping into my work, thematically.

The cheese puffs, for me, were like this edible bling. They symbolized everything about this society that’s about fast and cheap and quick and bright, and like, “I want it, and I want it now, and I want to be able to throw it away.”

I started working with [cheese puffs] in Mexico, where they are even more orange and bigger than they are here. They became the cornerstone for the performance installation and … we used a cargo tricycle as an anchor and it pulled the cart. Sometimes I was in it, and sometimes I was dancing, and sometimes I was speaking to people. One of the things that people were invited to do was … they were offered the chance to have a trash miracle. They could call a phone number, and they would have a sort of intake so their trash miracle could be processed.

They were asked all sorts of questions, like how many takeout cups they use per day. They were asked to measure their answers out by scooping cheese puffs on top of me. So I became this human measure of what people were using. That’s a way that, more than seeing dancing bodies on the stage, people are interacting with live humans and with materials. It’s asking them to think about something that they don’t usually think about, and maybe they don’t want to think about. But it’s so wacky and it’s so off the map that they’re willing to go there.

I’m not averse to dancing. I’m classically trained and that’s part of my toolbox, but I don’t feel like we can afford to limit our work to just that right now.

Perry: Assessing nontraditional, interdisciplinary work can be a challenge. As an artist, how do you assess your work?

Sigman: If I’m making a work that’s more in a dance community for a more traditional dance venue, and the language is more purely movement, then my criteria are very different than when I’m getting carted around in the Bronx and having cheese puffs scooped on me. The goals change, and the criteria for success change. But in an overarching way, there is the sense of wanting to give people some sort of experience. And the best way to do that is gonna vary, right? So if you’re dealing with a rarified, educated dance audience, you can create a certain kind of choreographic movement and … it can move them; it can get them to think.

I made a piece for Groundworks Dance Theatre [in Cleveland]. It’s a repertory company, highly classically trained. They have that skill, and they have an audience that’s used to seeing that. So I know that’s a language that has the potential to give people an experience.

But in other places, it might not. So I have to look for different tools. It might mean offering people a cup of tea. But the goal is to nudge people to think and to feel and to be alive at a time when there’s so much happening in this world that is urgent and a little disturbing. And how can we ask people to think about that and to be agents? What will your role be; what will your participation be; what will your stance be? And it’s not to tell them what to think, it’s just to ask them to think.

• Ray Hall – Dance Canvas, Ballet Tennessee, Atlanta Ballet Centre for Dance Education
• Angela Harris – Dance Canvas, Urban Ballet Theater, Columbia City Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem School
• Robert Mason – Dance Canvas, Amaglamate Dance Company, New York City, Ailey School
• Sandra Parks – “The King and I” national tour, Wu-I Dance, Taiwan, professor at Kennesaw State University
• Katie McMillen Stull – Georgia Ballet, Ballet Concerto, Texas Christian University
• Emily Vanderklay – Atlanta Ballet, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line Productions, Boston Ballet School
• Tracy Vogt – Philadanco, Cleveland Contemporary Dance Theater, Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company, University of the Arts
• Marcus White – Paradigm Dance (co-founder), Greensboro, North Carolina, Detroit Dance Collective, UNC Greensboro
• Dana Woodruff – MFA, NYU, Adelphi University, professor at Kennesaw State University

Two additional choreographers will be chosen through partnerships with Kennesaw State University and Dance 101. Dance Canvas is also teaming up with New York-based Career Transitions for Dancers to present a workshop for local dance professionals, scheduled for November 19 in conjunction with Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE’s performance at the Rialto Center for the Arts.

Dance Canvas' Jaquez Q Hunt. (Photos by Richard Calmes)

Angela Harris, executive artistic director of Dance Canvas, says the organization has three goals: to “jump-start” emerging choreographers’ careers by providing them with a professional venue, access to dancers and other support; to develop high school and college dance students’ careers; and to grow local dance audiences. When she explained this mission to the audience at Dance Canvas’ debut performance on the Playhouse’s Stage 2 several years ago, she sent them off with the final words “Atlanta needs this,” to resounding applause.

When she began her professional dance career in New York, Harris says, “the vibe and opportunities were a whole lot different.” But she loved Atlanta and wanted to stay here. She hopes to foster a similar environment here, where performance and production are at a more polished level, the idea of dance as a career is more accepted, dancers are paid what they’re worth, and there is more of New York’s greater sense of camaraderie within a professional dance network. This is key to building audiences, Harris told me, which is essential to building a stronger dance community.

Her efforts have not gone unrecognized. Last summer, the Americans for the Arts organization awarded Harris its American Express Emerging Leader Award for her “leadership, innovative thinking and commitment to advancing the arts” in her community.

What’s different about this year’s set of choreographers? Harris says she’s looking for emerging artists who are serious about furthering their careers, not just locally but nationally. A panel of dance professionals and non-dancers, including Harris and Dance Canvas production coordinator Dana Woodruff, selected choreographers from a pool of 36 applicants. Harris says she looked for originality and, more specifically, a unique voice, variety and accessibility. In addition to viewing video samples of work, she asked applicants to discuss their long-term goals and to choose a local dance mentor whom they’d like to work with if they could. For returning choreographers, Harris assessed their career paths since their last Dance Canvas presentation.

One of this year’s choreographers, Robert Mason, showed a strikingly memorable work in 2008, called “Hunger.” About a year later, he joined the New York-based Amaglamate Dance Company. Mason and dancer Jennifer Davis, who are now married to each other, have since returned to Atlanta and recently founded City Gate, a contemporary modern dance company. Mason and Davis will offer a preview of City Gate’s style at Dance Canvas’ January showcase.

Harris aimed “to create a diverse show that is artistically interesting to a wide cross-section, as well as relatable to the community.” The concert will display a range of styles, including contemporary and neoclassical ballet, Horton-based modern dance, contemporary jazz, hip-hop and a new tap piece by Ray Hall.

Clearly the troupe is expanding its artistic range. James Kudelka’s “The Four Seasons” offered up the company’s classical, lyric, human side, showing a man’s journey through the cycles of life. The piece unfolded with subtle beauty, breadth, volume and depth, if a little predictably, as Vivaldi’s music illuminated an ordered universe, where life and mortality are governed by natural forces. Coupled with “The Four Seasons,” the second piece, Wayne McGregor’s “EDEN/EDEN,” gained potency, showing a frightening vision of a future where humans use (or abuse?) science and technology to intervene with the natural cycles of life. This is a path we’re already on.

This electrically charged, visually mesmerizing, kinetically intense and thought-provoking work revealed a leaner, meaner Atlanta Ballet; it felt historic and groundbreaking for the company. The show runs for just four performances, concluding with a 2 p.m. matinee Sunday, October 23. Do not miss it. For tickets, click here.

John Welker and Christine Winkler in "The Four Seasons." (Photo by K. Kenney, courtesy of Atlanta Ballet)

The combination of traditional ballet fans and a curious, younger crowd brought a sophisticated ambiance to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. Perhaps McGregor’s “rock star” status among choreographers attracted them. (McGregor is artistic director of Random Dance in London and resident choreographer of the Royal Ballet.) Or perhaps it was Kudelka’s longstanding reputation. Whatever the draw, the house appeared well filled.

Restaged from its U.S. premiere in 2010, “The Four Seasons” set the tone — a nod to the company’s traditions. Kudelka’s classically based vocabulary welcomed modern dance’s sense of volume, momentum and breadth. This added texture and shape to the work’s baroque coils and twists, creating a three-dimensional use of space that some younger company members have yet to fully discover. The Atlanta Ballet Orchestra was supportive throughout, conducted by Martin West.

Christine Winkler and lead dancer John Welker’s “Summer” duet highlighted their rare partnership as the company’s most accomplished dancers, who happen to be married to each other. This may explain the unusual degree of shared trust, subtle communication and risk between them, apparent as Winkler approached seductively, leaned onto her pointe and suddenly spun through an arpeggio of pirouettes, then paused cat-like, lit in pale green against a fiery-colored background. Then, as if seized by violent passion, Welker forcefully manipulated her over his shoulder, flipped her upside down, wrapped her around his back and sent her into a spiral descent around his leg to the floor.

Tara Lee dazzled in “Autumn,” and Jesse Tyler was in his natural element dancing Kudelka’s brisk, vigorous style. In “Winter,” Naomi Dixon Clark, a veteran of many Atlanta Ballet principal roles, now mostly retired, was the irrepressible star. She shone as she comforted an aging Welker and guided him gently into death. “The Four Seasons” is a gorgeous work.

Atlanta Ballet performs Wayne MacGregor's "EDEN/EDEN," a beautiful dystopia of our making. ("EDEN/EDEN" photos by Charlie McCullers, courtesy of Atlanta Ballet)

But the thriller of the evening was “EDEN/EDEN.” In contrast to “The Four Seasons,” “EDEN/EDEN’s” world was strikingly different from what we expect on a ballet stage. More often than not, today’s ballets offer an escape from today’s reality, which is dominated by rampant technology, computers and astonishing medical breakthroughs. But McGregor confronts this reality head on with a vision of the near future that is at once terrifying and irresistibly captivating. He choreographed Steve Reich’s video opera “Three Tales,” in which the third act (titled “Dolly”) depicts a world inhabited by clones and artificially intelligent beings of our creation.

“I don’t think robots are going to take over from us, because there isn’t going to be an ‘us,’ ” says Rodney Brooks, a professor of artificial intelligence at MIT, one of more than a dozen scientists, philosophers and researchers whose voices are heard over Reich’s driving Minimalist electronic score. Their questions about the techniques, theories, ethics and implications of cloning and artificial intelligence are overlaid with references to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, the Bible’s Book of Genesis and occasional sterile, flat singing by Kismet, a robot built by MIT’s Cynthia Breazeal, designed to learn the same social interaction skills that infants learn.

The most telling and engaging aspect were the parts that took the dancers to physical extremes. It started in the opening solo, by a bold, fearless Tara Lee, as genetics experts explained how Dolly, the first cloned sheep, was created. Bald and genderless in Ursula Bombshell’s costumes, her muscular body appeared as if genetically engineered and thus physically perfect (though we know that this illusion is won through toil and sweat). A man, also an idealized specimen, rose from a trap door; she gave him life as a mostly barren Tree of Knowledge lowered down. With mechanistic regularity, more clones appeared under Charles Balfour’s clinical white light. This was part of McGregor’s intent: “to create a new Garden of Eden — cloned.”

Reich’s electronic music sped along, jarringly, like pistons incessantly moving up and down or like pulsating electronic circuitry, suggesting a society racing along, organized by the unceasing on/off workings of a computer that processes everything in binary code, powered by a flow of electric current. This was accompanied by Ravi Deepres’ projections: white flashes across a scrim, like electrical impulses speeding through brain synapses.

With driving, mechanistic regularity, the dancers lunged and then perched up on pointe. Legs whipped into vertical extensions; torsos undulated as if electric currents raced up and down their spines. Bodies twisted into oddly unnatural postures. They were tossed and lifted and spun around, arriving in balances in extreme extensions with robotic precision. Astounding. What was required of the dancers to create this superhuman illusion?

At first they appeared as clones, then later moved jerkily as if their bodies had become engineered by more and more technology — like humans evolving into cyborgs. Finally, we heard scientist Breazeal ask the robot Kismet, “Maybe you’ll play with your yellow toy?” Lee, on the floor, twitched and writhed mechanically, like some sort of cyborg infant, creeping inevitably toward the Tree.

For those who like to be enthralled with art that poses tough questions, breaks down preconceptions and stretches a company’s artistic range, “EDEN/EDEN” will be talked about for seasons to come.

“Chug, hop, a-one, a-two,

Bal-lon-née, pas-de-bour-rée …”

As he gives directions, each beat a syllable of a ballet term, it becomes clear how Balanchine extended the classical ballet language, largely by rearranging traditional steps to syncopated rhythms.

Set to songs by George Gershwin, “Who Cares?” will headline “Rhythm and Rhapsody,” the Georgia Ballet’s main performance event of the season. Also on the program will be Janusz Mazon’s “Prelude Pictures,” offering a different take on Gershwin, and “Aurora’s Wedding,” from the 19th-century Russian classic “The Sleeping Beauty,” to Tchaikovsky’s music. The program will run this Saturday and Sunday at the Cobb County Civic Center’s Jennie T. Anderson Theater. Click here for tickets.

Elizabeth Chapman, Abby Hyatt, Mara Mandradjieff and Phillip Skaggs of the Georgia Ballet rehearse "Who Cares?" (Photos by Janusz Mazon)

Neal, in a classic white T-shirt, his long legs in black jazz pants, moves with the rhythmic agility of a tap dancer but with the clean-lined vigor of a dancer who has spent his performing career with the New York City Ballet. Neal retired last year as principal dancer, and the Balanchine Trust quickly snapped him up. He’s one of a younger generation of Balanchine Trust répétiteurs responsible for restaging works by one of the 20th century’s most influential choreographers. A trained jazz and tap dancer before he became serious about ballet, Neal has danced as the Hoofer in Balanchine’s “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” and all manner of princely roles. But the jazzy, soft-shoe rhythms of “Who Cares?” are close to his heart.

As dancers Mara Mandradjieff and Phillip Skaggs rehearse, every sequence of steps has to be carefully learned and practiced, as Gershwin’s syncopated rhythms make steps much faster, with unusual accents and quick changes of direction. Together, the pair weave through interlacing balances and twirls.

“TUM ta dum ta dum PUM pah yahhh.” Mandradjieff breaks away from Scaggs with a perky hop that spills into pattering grapevine steps, a couple of sassy turned-in step-over-steps; a breezy chug quickly switches back with a kick-and-cut-under ballonné. Neal offers tips on how to relax the body’s weight into the floor on certain beats, the opposite of the “pulled up” way that ballet dancers usually work. “Think soft shoe,” he advises. “It’s not like you’re a ballerina.”

Mandradjieff works out a series of scissoring ball-changes and forward-back tilts of the pelvis from an open lunge. For a ballet dancer trained to maintain the body in vertical alignment, this requires some undoing. “Think ‘Dancing With the Stars,’” urges Neal.

Mandradjieff loosens up a little, bringing a sense of cheeky showmanship to the steps, though they’re still elegant and long-limbed.

Elizabeth Chapman, Abby Hyatt and Mara Mandradjieff practice, practice and practice.

Balanchine choreographed “Who Cares?” in 1970, but the 40-minute, plotless work harks back to his early years as a young choreographer with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, when Gershwin was popular in Europe. Later, while Balanchine was choreographing movies and Broadway shows in the United States, he started working with Gershwin on Samuel Goldwyn’s “Follies” in 1937, but the collaboration was cut short when the composer succumbed to a brain tumor. Years later, Balanchine chose 16 of Gershwin’s songs from a book the composer had given him, including “My One and Only,” “‘S’ Wonderful” and “I Got Rhythm.”

“He loved Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, soft shoe,” Neal said of Balanchine. “He was embracing New York City and America as his home, but he mixed it with his [Russian] Petipa heritage.” Costume designer Karinska brought out dancers’ balletic qualities but infused them with flashy Broadway style. Colorful scenery suggested the Manhattan skyline in silhouette.

“Who Cares?” will be the fourth Balanchine work the Georgia Ballet has performed in the past five years. It reflects the unusually high standards that the relatively small company maintains under Gina Hyatt-Mazon’s and Janusz Mazon’s artistic leadership, in the tradition of the Hamburg Ballet, where they spent much of their performing careers. It’s a wise investment for the troupe, the only one in town that has performed this master choreographer’s works. That’s surprising, because most of Balanchine’s works that are still in production are timeless ballets, ingeniously constructed and historically significant. And they challenge dancers to acquire the rhythm, speed and musicality they need to perform today’s contemporary works.

“This is technically a big step up for them,” Neal said. “It’s hard to get them to understand — not just them, anyone — that although this is jazzy and it’s Gershwin and it’s loose, you still have to respect the classical vernacular. It’s not all style and no substance. But they were ready for me, guns ablaze the first day.”

These days, younger, smaller companies such as the Georgia Ballet, as well as schools and conservatories, are eager to perform Balanchine repertoire, said Ellen Sorrin, director of the Balanchine Trust. The number of the choreographer’s works in production around the world hasn’t changed, she said. But more former NYCB dancers are now teaching, and they want these ballets for their students. “The training prepares them for almost everything.”

Philip Neal and Abby Hyatt

Balanchine’s abstract ballets help build dancers’ skills for works by currently voguish choreographers such as Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky and Jorma Elo. Neal explained that those dance-makers also work primarily in the abstract: like Balanchine, their non-narrative works deal mostly with pure movement and its relation to music. As such, details become more apparent and meaningful than in narrative ballets. Neal repeated the oft-heard quote, “The gesture of how you present your foot has to tell a story.”

Back in rehearsal, he teaches three women and one male dancer a final tableau. The women strike arabesques, gesturing graciously toward the man in the center. It’s a bit like the three muses in Balanchine’s 1928 “Apollo,” and that’s the intent. Dance critic Arlene Croce wrote of this part, “The allusion to 1928 … reverberates with ‘Apollo’s’ own recapitulations of the Nineties and Marius Petipa — high noon at the Maryinsky — and so we are borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Neal relates to me what dancer Jacques D’Amboise passed on to him: “Yes, you’re Apollo, but you’re on Broadway.”