The premiere of “Roem” marked one year since gloATL’s Atlanta debut with “rapt,” a site-specific multimedia work that broke new ground on the Woodruff campus. Since then, Stallings has created 11 new commissions. Five, including “Roem,” were full-length premieres in Atlanta, a clear indication of her commitment to her home city. “Roem” rounds off Stallings’ list of world premieres this past season to an even dozen — a staggering output by any standard. (Photos of “Roem” by Greg Mooney.)

So if “Roem” was of less consequence than other gloATL works — last fall’s “pour,” performed at Le Flash-Atlanta in Castleberry Hill, was the most compelling — it’s of little concern. This hour-long series of nine sections lacked cohesion at times, due to its loose, episodic structure and partial reliance on improvisation, especially near the end. But clearly, this group of six gloATL members and 16 workshop participants coalesced into a dynamic moving body with unified intent as Stallings again expanded her artistic vocabulary. Aided by gaga technique, the ensemble moved through strenuous level changes and daring partnering configurations with deceptive coolness and ease.

More than a thousand people gathered on the hot, humid Saturday evening for the free event, which spanned from Sifly Piazza to the corner of 16th and Peachtree Streets. Buildings, piazza and lawn became performance spaces; between sections of choreography, dancers migrated from one area to another as the audience followed, competing for vantage points. After dark, lighting designer Ryan O’Gara illuminated the grounds in turquoise, violet, fuscia and gold. Project designer and filmmaker Adam Larsen animated the High Museum of Arts’ white walls with huge images, nearly five stories high, yet softly disarming.

While “rapt” came on with a rush of newness, “Roem” felt more grounded — as if gloATL was settling in to its home, musing on its architecture. In a prologue by guest choreographer Ivan Pulinkala, Toni Doctor Jenkins slowly walked the long ramp extending from the High’s entrance toward Peachtree Street. On the nearby grassy slope, elegant and fluid, Jenkins reached toward the sky, dropped into the grass and rose, settling into subtly articulated, angular sculptural shapes.

To a live percussion ensemble’s earthy pulse, Sarah Hilmer’s standout solo embodied the stable, steep angles, the thin, graceful arms and the mobile, rounded blades of Alexander Calder’s kinetic sculpture “Three Up, Three Down.” Hilmer loped across the grassy slope toward the ensemble, costumed by April McCoy in shades of burnt orange, copper, coral and pink that seemed to spring from Calder’s sculpture as well. Movement related to the ground and surrounding sights – open, splayed, with leaps and rolls on the grass.

Up on the piazza, a bird-like Virginia Coleman rose timidly from her nest as the audience encircled her. Gathering strength, she ascended a two-story ladder, halting breathlessly at its peak. Dancers clustered below, mouths pulled open expectantly, like hungry baby birds. Striking also was Nicole Johnson’s solo, “Roem,” to piano music by Chopin, staged in a shallow canal between the High and the Memorial Arts Building. During this quiet solo, the High’s walls glowed with images of Johnson dancing. Movement rippled across the building’s tiles like a melody across a piano’s keys.

Down on the ground, Johnson slid through the water like a bird skidding down onto a pond’s surface. As she splashed, slid and backstroked freely, this heart of the evening’s work felt like a safe return home. In keeping with “rapt,” “Roem” concluded with a dance party on the lawn. On the building faces, dozens of hands reached upward, expectantly. Stallings pulled her father from his chair into the dancing crowd. Johnson reached out to me. Boundaries erased. Pure joy.

There’s something extraordinary about Stallings choosing Atlanta as her home base, and about the city’s support for her troupe. This fall, gloATL will make its Joyce Theater debut in New York and will return to the Duo Theater there, among other commissions. And in Atlanta, Stallings plans to help coordinate Luminocity, a proposed grand-scale spectacle of light, music, aerial dance and choreography.

We’re pleased to introduce Daryl Foster, founder and co-artistic director of LIFT, a new organization built to attract and retain male dancers in Atlanta through performances and mentoring. Foster danced professionally with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company 2 and Opus Dance Theater New York, and he holds an MFA in dance from Florida State University. As choreographer and teacher, Foster (at left) remains deeply invested in the local dance community, and he offers a unique perspective on some of the challenges Atlanta dance artists face. — Cynthia and Pierre

By DARYL FOSTER

It’s a quiet Monday, late in the day, and things are beginning to slow down for most of us. Many dancers in Atlanta, however, are just beginning to shift into gear.

One is Quincy Lamar Wills. Affectionately known as “Q,” he is meeting me to discuss his love for Atlanta and his commitment to serve our dance community. It hasn’t always been easy for him. He has struggled with a dilemma that many Atlanta-based dancers and choreographers face — whether to stay in Atlanta and build the community or leave for larger cities with more opportunity like New York or Los Angeles. (Wills in second photo, with purple hat. All photos by Lynne Cymone.)

Dressed in athletic attire, a quiet, strong and muscular Quincy agrees to sit with me before his evening hip-hop classes at Gotta Dance Atlanta. He tells me of a simpler time in Atlanta, when hip-hop dance work was limited to backup dancing in an occasional music industry video or tour. Although Q moved to Atlanta with hopes of dancing with female hip-hop sensation TLC, he landed his first gig with R&B artist Evelyn “Champagne” King.

He eventually left Atlanta for Los Angeles, where he had to start from the beginning in a city with a more competitive and developed entertainment industry. Over time, he carved out a place for himself there, signed with a talent agency and became a working, thriving artist. But a series of unusual events led him back to Atlanta.

Following a visit home to Dallas, Quincy missed his flight back to L.A. Without money to rebook a flight, he was stranded at home for six months, until fate landed him a job in a fitness video by Donna Richardson, the wife of radio host Tom Joyner. With money from that, he planned to return to Los Angeles to get back into the game, after a trip to Atlanta to catch up with friends. But he never left Atlanta. It felt like home. And this time, instead of building a career for himself, he set about making opportunities for young dancers in the city he loves. He found his passion here, developing talent.

Partly because of Quincy’s influence, Atlanta now has dance talent agencies of its own, and studios filled with young, hot hip-hop dancers vying for a piece of the pie. But there are a lot of hungry dancers and a very small pie. The concert dance community isn’t much different. Outside of Atlanta Ballet, stable, paying jobs can be scarce.

Atlanta native and Tri-Cities High School graduate Juel Lane (below, at right) was encouraged by teachers like Dawn Axam to leave Atlanta to get training, culture and opportunity. Lane earned a degree from the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts and then danced in New York with Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE. Brown’s choreography informed much of Lane’s athletic, Afro-modern movement style. 

Lane’s time in the North contrasted greatly with his life in Atlanta. “Everyone, from what I recall, was trying to have the power,” he said. “I didn’t remember people working together. I just remember all these talented elders, but no one was collectively taking the weight.

“As an artist you have to be able to share with your community, and that’s why I returned to Atlanta!”

Lane is ecstatic to find an eager community of young artists here, working together on exciting projects. He recently choreographed and danced in the premiere of “LIFT,” an all-male dance showcase, and “I Dream,” a new musical about the life of Martin Luther King Jr.

The key to Lane’s success in Atlanta is flexibility. He has been able to flow seamlessly between concert dance and musicals, making appearances in Atlanta and New York. He has maintained connections with New York choreographer Camille Brown and recently performed her work at the Joyce Theater and Jacob’s Pillow. Lane is performing in “I Dream” this month at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre.

Georgia native and University of Georgia dance graduate Carrie Couch (above and below) is another home-grown young Atlanta dance artist. She’s smart, talented, beautiful and extremely frustrated.

She received a premium Georgia education and forged a career spanning ballet to ballroom, with experiences as varied as dancing en pointe in “Giselle” as a UGA student to MTV’s “Chi Rocks” with singer-actress Adrienne Lau. Couch made a choreographic splash in her November 2009 Dance Canvas premiere of “As I Am” at the 14th Street Playhouse. But this hot hip-hop diva must travel between Atlanta and Los Angeles just to remain relevant in the business. For her and many like her, who seek to book music videos, national tours and major commercial work, L.A. is still the capital. As I write, Couch is planning to return there for more opportunities and for support that only a larger, arts-friendly city can provide.

The reality is that great nations and cities produce great art. New York is synonymous with Broadway, major ballet companies like New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, and the Metropolitan Opera. You can’t think about Paris without recalling images of historic architecture, fashion, the Musée D’Orsay and the Louvre. Atlanta is culturally behind these cities. Until we, as citizens, take responsibility for supporting great art, and purchasing tickets, we will forever be seeking culture someplace else.

Like Couch, hundreds of artists leave Atlanta, or worse yet, never come. But Quincy and Lane have found ways to make Atlanta work. They are committed to making great art here, and so far it is paying off for them. Many artists such as these contribute to making our city a cultural hub, bringing economic benefits for all.

The company was founded by young choreographer Joanna Brooks, just out of her 20s. She’s ambitious, driven and takes her work seriously. A lot of people in town respect her vision — Good Moves and Dance 101 give her rehearsal space, and Atlanta Ballet artistic director John McFall has given the company studio space for its Dance for Parkinson’s Disease outreach classes.

If Brooks is not yet in Lauri Stallings’ league as a choreographer, it’s partly because Brooks is tied primarily to the local scene, where most dance troupes go from one performance to the next on tiny shoestring budgets that depend on piecemeal funding and dancers who’ll work part time for very little pay. This year, the budget for Brooks and Company will be around $20,000.

But Brooks is clearly up and coming on the Atlanta dance scene, with a growing, loyal following. She tends to take on serious subjects: She told me that she’s tackling child sex trafficking for November, then plans on Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 2011. So far I’ve seen mainly abstract choreography from her, not narrative work, which raises the question of whether her choreographic skill is sophisticated enough to successfully take on such subjects.

Unlike companies such as Zoetic and some of the eclectic postmodern work coming out of Decatur, Brooks (above) stays grounded in the Martha Graham modern dance tradition, where most of her training lies. She explains that emotions are expressed viscerally through movements rooted in the contraction, release and spiraling of the spine, initiated by the deep abdominal muscles. Clearly etched arm and hand gestures recall Graham’s style. Brooks’ dance vocabulary isn’t groundbreaking, but it upholds a technical standard that much of the modern dance community has ignored, and she earns a measure of respect for that. (Top photo by Christopher T. Martin; middle and lower photos by Will Day.)

“MENT,” which is only the company’s second site-specific work, has the makings of a groundbreaking event for it. It will be fascinating on many levels. With so many elements that Brooks has never worked with before, the pieces may not fit together all the time. But surely it will be a spectacle, a celebration for the city and a brave step forward for Joanna Brooks.

In recent years, Sarasvati, a UGA professor, has given few performances in Atlanta, focusing instead on concerts in Athens and at national and international dance events. But her influence on the Atlanta dance community has remained strong through the artists she has trained, who include Matt Kent, Emily Milam Kent, Beth Lewis and Blake Dalton. On the success of an alumni concert at UGA in February, and following her participation in the Wormhole Project’s choreographic workshop in May, Sarasvati told me that it was time to branch into Atlanta again.

Sarasvati’s return sits well with Zoetic’s mission to bring members of the local dance community together. In its second year, the Choreographers’ Showcase will also include the premiere of Daryl Foster’s “4 Out of 5,” Beth Lewis’ “Stand Alone” and two works created under Wormhole Project mentoring programs: Lewis’ “The Daily” and Amanda Thompson’s “One Foot on the Ground.” Students from the exchange’s two-week workshop will perform excerpts from repertory by T. Lang, Terry Slade and Bubba Carr. A film by Mallory Baxley will give a behind-the-scenes view of choreographic processes leading up to the performance.

UGA students have performed “Coeur de CORE” (top and bottom photos) nearly every year since its 2006 premiere, despite the rigorous rehearsals it requires. The reason is simple: It’s empowering. As they practice, the dancers grow physically adept and personally strong, Sarasvati said. Extensive level changes — quick movements that rise from the floor to high levels, shooting upward at angles, off of the body’s vertical line of gravity — require deep muscular strength and precision.

Accompanied by percussion, “Coeur de CORE” draws inspiration from its title, meaning “heart to core,” and draws cultural influences from the Coeur D’Alene and Nez Perce Indians of the Pacific Northwest, where Sarasvati grew up. She also found inspiration in the Navajo Indian notion of shape-shifting. This ties in with Sarasvati’s knowledge of Rudolf Laban’s Effort ideas, where specific images help distinguish a person’s expressive range of movement qualities, or dynamics.

The Navajos use imagery, such as putting oneself behind the eyes of a particular animal, to “connect physicality and spirit” and “to create and change the energy of the body,” Sarasvati explained. “But the dancers aren’t trying to enact anything, culturally, except for notions about being inside themselves, being very strong and empowered as they move, and being able to take in the environment.”

This will be the third cast of dancers to perform the quartet, which was selected for the 2006 National American College Dance Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington. In 2008, “Coeur de CORE” was chosen for the Choreographic Center International Concert in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And next month, CORE Concert Dance Company will perform the piece at the World Dance Alliance Global Conference at the Dance Theater Workshop in New York City.

At times, “Halō” echoed the theater’s past, as a 19th-century Belle Epoch-style ballroom and, later, a vaudeville theater where Katherine Dunham and José Limón also appeared. In the late 1960s and ’70s, it was Andy Warhol’s venue for male porn films and productions featuring the pop artist’s transgender superstars. Stallings reconfigured the traditional proscenium stage, running a single row of seats around the space’s perimeter. The audience framed a divided performance area made up of an elevated stage on one side and a gently sloping house floor on the other. (Photos of “Halō” by A. Ruiz.)

Unlike the large, crowded public venues where gloATL has performed in Atlanta, the DMAC offered a rare close-up view of six gloATL dancers. Proximity allowed dancers to meet audience eye to eye and to engage in the personal exchanges that Stallings pursues in her site-specific works. In the past, inviting an audience into a work has had its risks. It’s easy to see how passers-by in public venues could slip into voyeuristic attitudes, crushing trust between audience and performer. It’s easy to see how that delicate respect for the artists could be violated further through physical contact.

In “Halō,” Stallings confronted feelings of being exposed, reinforced the need for protection and re-established a sense of trust between artists and audience. GloATL student artist Nicole Jones stood under the ornately carved ceiling, amid the walls decked with classically styled murals, as a small metal lamp hanging from its cord (Ryan O’Gara’s design) cast golden light on her head and bare shoulders. To the famous “Adagio” for organ and strings by Albinoni, little impulses seemed to travel through her torso, as if an energized marble scanned the body’s interior. Her meandering focus, squaring on one person after another, seemed both internally aware and outwardly curious.

In the next section, five women clad in black danced in unison to an electronic beat, pelvis-driven, alternately exposing the body and crossing arms in front in what appeared to be an explosive release of sexual tension. At one point, they thrust elbows upward, angular and seemingly dissonant, like a silent cry. Occasionally a dancer approached an audience member from floor level, reaching into a knee crease, crossing the threshold between audience and performer.

To emotionally penetrating strains of Arvo Pärt’s “Tabula Rasa,” the dancers lined the perimeter in poses like store mannequins or bas-relief figures. With knees bent, backs arched and elbows tightly bent above the head, two dancers side by side bounced lightly as if trying to settle into an uncomfortable pose that was equally unsettling to watch.

The seductive aspect of dance turned absurd in a section set to “Habanera” from Bizet’s “Carmen.” Torsos thrust and limbs flung in all directions as the cluster of women struck oddly contorted poses. At moments they froze, shaking an isolated body part — a foot or hand — to a comical effect that seemed to turn voyeurism on its ear. In sweet contrast, Jones and Nicole Johnson walked slowly forward, facing the edge of the stage. Walking behind Jones, Johnson held her hand and hovered behind the young dancer under golden light. Johnson seemed to consecrate and protect the body even as she displayed the child-woman to the audience. In a larger sense, it felt as if the dancing body was made sacred again.

A sensuous joy followed as Sarah Hillmer and Virginia Coleman assumed a stylized ballroom stance and took flight to a Verdi waltz that led to a playful section where dancers, as spellbinding, marionette-like creatures, led audience members across the floor, into a waltz that morphed into a Latin dance. As the work reached its revolving end, ”Tabula Rasa” played, and curved movement seemed to ripple out of the ground with a newfound strength and power — polyrhythmic, in circular harmony.

Rather than compete with the growing crowd that follows Stallings’ performances in her home base of Atlanta, it was refreshing to see her emotionally honest, inventive choreography up close, at eye level with six of the most physically gutsy, emotionally daring, technically spot-on dancers I’ve seen. DMAC hopes to produce the work again in November. By inviting the audience in, “Halō” may have jarred some viewers out of their comfort zones. But others, “tired of the same old song,” are ready for choreography that’s risky, genuine and fresh.

Similarly, a stream of new commissions has had Stallings zig-zagging across the map, from River North Dance Chicago’s “Suppose” in February to Ballet Nouveau Colorado’s “On the Porch” in April, from Ballet Augsburg’s “Zoot,” also in April, to Ballet British Columbia’s “Zak,” opening in Vancouver on June 16. (Photos, from various gloATL performances, are courtesy of Lauri Stallings.)

Though these works have drawn from sources ranging from Stallings’ childhood in the Florida tropics to the Apollo 11 space mission, the various commissions are part of an evolving body of work intent on softening barriers — whether physical, social or psychological — in order to foster intimate personal exchange between performers and the public. Through the Gaga movement system, which she learned from its creator, Ohad Naharin, Stallings is building a movement language that taps into deeply personal and fundamentally human modes of expression.

Stallings is now rehearsing with gloATL for the upcoming premiere of “Halo,” June 10-12 at the Duo Multicultural Arts Center in New York City’s East Village. Last summer, the center’s executive and artistic director, Michelangelo Alasa, and dance curator Lisa Rinehart chose Stallings from among 25 choreographers who submitted shorter works. Stallings, along with Keely Garfield and Sidra Bell, received commissions to choreograph for the center’s first series of full-length dance works, to be tailored for its historic theater’s fading grandeur and colorful ambiance.

Traditionally, a theater’s gilded proscenium divides house from stage. But Stallings will stage “Halo” in the round, crossing this boundary between audience and performers. A ring of seats around the space’s perimeter will flow up over the proscenium line to encircle performers, setting dancers and audience on equal ground. Music for “Halo” includes a familiar Albinoni adagio, electronica pieces by Nortec Collective’s Bostich & Fussible, and Nina Simone’s soulful “Wild Is the Wind.” GloATL dancers will wear designer Emilee Cooper’s simple Israeli pants with shirts that can alternately cover or expose skin. Frequent gloATL collaborator Ryan O’Gara will design the lighting.

At the heart of Stallings’ work is her fertile and complex movement language. Working from a classical base and using Gaga technique as the method for exploration, she continues to discover new veins of expression. In rehearsal last week, I watched her teach new phrases to her dancers. Though she seldom repeats the same movement twice, there are patterns and consistencies.

Phrases unwind with a stripped-down, naked honesty. There’s nothing superficial — movement draws its source from deep physical impulses. At times, it seems that a mobile inner eye scans shifting contours of the body’s internal structure — the organs, muscles and bones — opening “pockets of hidden movement,” Stallings explained. Punctuated by weighted drops of the pelvis, dancers move on and off center, often with a fluid, undulating spine.

Movement accents unusual parts of the body: a wrist, an elbow, the top of a shoulder blade. Arms whisk the air around the body as if a draft of air was blowing through them. The legs occasionally sweep through space in broad strokes, and dancers pass through recognizable transitions — a coupé here, a fifth position there.

As with paint layered on a canvas, there’s a sense of depth and texture that draws people in to Stallings’ 360-degree world. Once there, viewers can experience her work at a gut level that’s uncannily self-revealing.

Stallings finds it refreshing to choreograph for the DMAC’s tiny jewel-box space, where viewers won’t miss any parts of the work. The intimate theater makes it possible to explore subtler movements and delve into more intimate emotions. The inherent risk of dancing in large public spaces — risk of being touched, violated — won’t exist here, and the dancers can let down the invisible “cloak,” or “membrane” of protection, that they often create by using a strong internal focus to separate themselves from the public. Because “Halo” will unfold in a safe environment, in close proximity to the audience, even the eyes can soften as dancers let down that last little veil.

“It’s very simple,” Stallings told me. “Maybe folks will be left with the sense that we were at eye level, completely softened … and we can be really human now.”

While in New York, Stallings will choreograph “Both,” a duet for Drew Jacoby and David Hallberg for a premiere at Jacob’s Pillow July 21-25. And on July 23 and 24, gloATL will perform the site-specific “Roem” on the Woodruff Arts Center campus. Next fall, Stallings will create a new work for Kennesaw State University dance majors as the school’s first dance artist in residence.

Under gloATL’s executive director, Bill Kaelin, who’s creating the position, plans are in process for a site-specific work in Atlanta next fall that will be on a larger scale than ever.

Foster, who teaches dance at Spelman College, looks on as Slade rehearses a new work, “Gethsemane,” with dancers Bernard Jackson, Shawn Evangelista and Robert Mason.

With almost overpowering energy, the three lean, muscular dancers weave through overlapping canons, spring into turning leaps and reach out as they ripple into the floor. A series of barrel turns loop through the air like the music’s syncopated rhythms and cyclical melodies. Both Foster and Slade advise the dancers on how to release tension — and aggression — so they can move softly and fluidly, finding moments of vulnerability. (Photos by Lynne Cymone.)

Based on biblical narrative, Slade’s trio explores the ebb and flow of emotions, the fears and anxieties that three of Christ’s disciples might have experienced during the night they spent in the Garden of Gethsemane, Slade explained. “It’s about men clinging together, living together, eating together, striving together.” In a broader sense, it’s a piece about brotherhood.

Foster approached Slade last fall with the idea of creating “LIFT.” Its goal is to help build a stronger community among male dancers so they can have fulfilling careers in Atlanta rather than have to seek them in cities like New York, Chicago or Philadelphia, as Foster and Slade have done. All-male dance concerts have been produced in New York, Philadelphia and Miami, but this one is a first for Atlanta.

Foster felt that personal experiences unique to men — with themes such as masculinity, sexuality, spirituality, community, politics and fatherhood — could be explored much more deeply in the exclusive company of other men. Foster and Slade invited Atlanta-based choreographers David Norwood, Juel Lane, Quincy Lamar and Timothy Jones, along with former Alvin Ailey dancer and guest choreographer Christopher Huggins, to present works centered on those six themes.

Foster’s “Broken Ties,” to music by Pat Metheny and Marvin Gaye, explores a father-son relationship. Foster told me that he began the process by asking the dancers to tell personal stories of rites of passage they had experienced between fathers and sons. One of the dancers had never learned how to tie a tie, even as an adult, because he had no father. Hence the duet, danced by Jelani A. Jones and Quintin Ponder, centers on a boy, who has just lost his mother, and his father, who’s been absent for most of the boy’s life. The father appears at her funeral, and wants to be back in the son’s life, but the son doesn’t want the relationship. In the end, father and son reconnect as the father shows the son how to tie a tie.

Slade’s solo “If,” to the Stevie Wonder Song “If It’s Magic,” expresses Slade’s love for his wife and for God, highlighting the eternal aspect of love. Juel Lane’s duet “Waiting,” performed by Lane and Jamal Callender, follows a gay relationship that gradually becomes more open as society becomes more tolerant. And David Norwood’s “Apollo Ghetto” explores a man’s many dimensions through emotional states such as anger, purity, strength and courage, combining poetry with a fusion of hip-hop and contemporary dance.

When Foster first came to Atlanta four years ago, he saw that most modern dance concerts were dominated by women. The roles he danced — often romantic duets with women — had little to do with his personal experience. “For the last 17 years I’ve been dancing and telling other people’s stories,” he said. “For one and one-half hours, I want men of color — white, black, Asian — to tell their stories.”

Accompanied by an exhibit of 80 historical photos and memorabilia, the performance will feature several popular revivals along with works by Atlanta-based choreographers Ivan Pulinkala and Matt Kent. The program will also include a new work by Victor Quijada, whose style blends influences from hip-hop, ballet and contemporary dance, and a rhythmically quirky, emotionally charged duet by Bennyroyce Royon, set to a Dani Siciliano song. In contrast to the classical works on the program, both Quijada’s and Royon’s pieces have a refreshingly fluid, grounded, urban feel.

Atlanta Ballet dancers in "Sinfonietta Giocosa." Photo by C. McCullers

I imagine that this assemblage of short pieces will put little demand on an audience’s attention spans. What I expect will astonish viewers is the dancers’ chameleon-like ability to transition from one physically demanding style to another that is radically different, and then to another. This poses extreme challenges to both body and mind. Knowing this group of dancers, their strength, versatility and work ethic will border on the heroic.

The program order for “Sheer Exhilaration”:

Act I
George Balanchine’s “Serenade”

Atlanta Ballet premiere of Matt Kent’s “Zugzwang”

Ben Stevenson’s “Prelude”

Atlanta Ballet premiere of Ivan Pulinkala’s “Lost”

Diane Coburn-Bruning’s “Berceuse”

Christopher Hampson’s “Sinfonietta Giocosa”

"Don Quixote." Photo by K. Kenney, courtesy of Atlanta Ballet

Act II

World premiere of “Impending Savour Assessment” by Victor Quijada

Michael Pink’s “Dracula”

John McFall after Marius Petipa, “Don Quixote” pas de deux

Atlanta Ballet premiere of “me in your fall” by Bennyroyce Royon

John McFall’s “Jupiter”

It’s a delicate balance: meeting a demand for contemporary dance without leaving fans of the classics behind. But whether it’s next May’s evening of emerging choreographers’ works at the Alliance Stage, or “The Nutcracker” with a live orchestra playing every show next December, there seems an interest in growing audiences with careful attention to artistic quality.

I expect that the season’s most enlightening choreography will be Val Caniparoli’s “Lambarena” and a new ballet from Christopher Hampson, coming in March. But a lesser known choreographer, Jorden Morris, headlines the season opener, and his full-length, narrative “Moulin Rouge – the Ballet” looks promising.

Morris was a Royal Winnipeg Ballet principal for most of his dance career. He’s been choreographing for more than 10 years while teaching, coaching and, most recently, helping run the RWB School. His 2006 full-length “Peter Pan” broke a box-office record for RWB.

Morris appears to be a deep thinker — someone who immerses himself in the history and culture of his ballet’s setting as he choreographs. In his “Moulin Rouge,” true to the era, opulent sets and vibrant costumes transport audiences to late-19th-century Paris: the famous Moulin Rouge dance hall, a tango café, street scenes by the Eiffel Tower, a bridge over the Seine. Through a painstaking process of musical selection, Morris compiled 31 pieces, mostly by French composers from the time when the Moulin Rouge was at its height, but also including songs by Edith Piaf and tango music by Astor Piazzola, which is played live onstage by a tango quartet.

Morris experienced authentic French can-can during the mid-1980s when he danced a lead role in Leonide Massine’s “Gaîté Parisienne.” But Morris told me that “Moulin Rouge” wasn’t influenced by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo’s 1938 comedy. Rather than put the can-can ladies in high-heeled character shoes, Morris elevated their high kicks onto pointe. It’s less risqué than the era’s true can-can, and more balletic. Still, it doesn’t come close to the fairy-tale tutus and pink tights of a classical “Sleeping Beauty” (which Atlanta Ballet will perform next February). The only visions of fairies in “Moulin Rouge” are absinthe-induced.

The story is fairly simple, based on a tragic love triangle among Nathalie, a young cabaret starlet, Matthew, an aspiring painter, and Zidler, the Moulin Rouge proprietor. Other characters are based on real historical personalities, such as painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, leading lady La Goulue and rising star Mome Fromage.

All told (including its home performance run and touring), last year’s RWB production of “Moulin Rouge” topped “Peter Pan” at the box office, grossing more than any other ballet the company has produced. If popularity is any indicator of how it will fare in October, “Moulin Rouge” may be a blockbuster for Atlanta Ballet, on par with Michael Pink’s “Dracula.”

Here’s the 2010-11 season lineup to date:

Oct. 22-31: “Moulin Rouge – the Ballet” at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. Choreography by Jorden Morris.

Nov. 27-Dec. 26: “Atlanta Ballet’s Nutcracker” at the Fox Theatre. Choreography by John McFall.

Feb. 11-13: “The Sleeping Beauty” at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. Choreography by John McFall.

March 25-27: “Fusion: Lambarena and a World Premiere” at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. Choreography by Val Caniparoli and Christopher Hampson.

May 13-15: “Ignition: New Choreographic Voices” at the Alliance Stage. Choreography by Gina Patterson, Bennyroyce Royon, Amy Seiwart and others TBA.

Established 20 years ago, this troupe’s high artistic standards and discipline stem from the persistence of founders Nena Gilreath and Waverly T. Lucas II. Of many influences, their link to Dance Theatre of Harlem’s co-founder Arthur Mitchell (the first African-American to become a principal dancer in an American ballet company) goes directly to George Balanchine’s ballet tradition. But Gilreath and Lucas’ style is also infused with connections to African culture. They’ve blended the two seemingly different dance forms, taking the grounded, fluid, rhythmic steps of West African dance up onto pointe. Their style shifts freely from the body-part isolations and fluid-spine undulations of African dance to the leaps and turns of ballet. At times we see the full-bodied expressiveness of modern dance, at others the showmanship of jazz, as rhythmic impulses emanate through soft, curved shapes, then reach out through bold, elegant balletic lines.

Choreographer Stephanie Dabney’s delicately sassy trio, “Sheer Essence,” paid tribute to the Harlem Renaissance to the pulse of Dinah Washington’s “Bye Bye Blues.” Brandy Carwile, Amy Hazelwood and Regina Matayer dashed off challenging pointe work and multiple turns melded with Charleston and other hip and shoulder-shaking Jazz Age moves.

Other standout pieces included two works by Robert Logan Mayo. It’s sad news that Mayo died of a heart attack last year. The former Dance Theatre of Harlem member, who was based in New York, has set a number of works for Ballethnic as well as the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company. 

Mayo’s athletic, neoclassical trio “Chiaroscuro,” to the tense, hard-edged soundtrack from “The Untouchables,” looked at the dark side of a love triangle. Gilreath, Carwile and Roscoe Sales played out their struggles through physical force and manipulation in a fiercely competitive world.

Part ritual, part spectacle, “The Leopard Tale” opened the program’s second half with a heart-palpitating procession as African rhythm, color and movement filled the theater. Women in white danced down an aisle, singing and shaking calabash rattles, while men proceeded down the other aisle playing djembe drums as polyrhythms reverberated off the smooth paneled walls. (Top photo.) Mark Burns appeared as a Witch Doctor, in brilliant, colorful robes and mask-like makeup and waving horsetails though the air. He seemed to invoke an invisible power with a slow, controlled promenade, leg lifted in a high side attitude. A well-rehearsed corps of students and guest artists joined the troupe to dance out the story of a village rallying together to defeat the Leopard’s threat to its safety.

Calvin Gentry, who performed in January at the Ferst Center for the Arts with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, gave a stunning performance as the Leopard (pictured above). With chiseled face and expressive eyes, he played a more elegant, noble cat than a menacing one. Strong and fluid, with subtly refined control, Gentry crouched, exploded into triple turns and sprung into multiple leaps as a band of warriors entrapped him, brought him down and booted him out of the village. Some good news: Gentry is returning to Atlanta, where he plans to pursue his college degree while performing with Ballethnic.

Next year, Lucas will choreograph an adaptation of Atlanta playwright Pearl Cleage’s play “Flyin’ West,” about African-American pioneer women on the Western frontier.