Your guide to upcoming dances that don’t feature sugar plum fairies
This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
In an era when the market starts gearing up for the winter holidays right after Halloween, even lifelong “Nutcracker” fans might be looking for something different. It’s good to tap into the vibrant dance community that surrounds us during this special time of year.
From Flamenco to contact improv and family-friendly story ballets to experimental projects that defy expectations and expand definitions, here is a guide to what else Atlanta dance has to offer through the end of 2025.
Mixed repertory and interdisciplinary events
Mixed repertory shows offer audiences an opportunity to see several shorter performances in one sitting, often featuring works by different choreographers.
Emory Dance Company Fall Concert
7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, Dance Studio, 1700 N. Decatur Road, Atlanta.
Emory University’s dance department is hosting the second Emory Arts fellow in dance, Madelyn Sher, who will create and produce a new full-length work in the spring. The fall concert will provide audiences with a preview of her choreographic talents in a shorter work set on the student company. In addition to Sher’s piece and new dances from Mara Mandradjieff, as well as Emory dance faculty Gregory Catellier and Kristin O’Neal, the program will feature contributions from Atlanta-based guest artists Andre Lumpkin and Meg Gourley.
Emory Arts and Social Justice Project Showcase and Community Conversation
6 p.m. Dec. 4, free. Mary Schmidt Campbell Center of Innovation & the Arts, 407 Westview Drive SW, Atlanta.
For the second year in a row, Emory’s Arts & Social Justice Program has included Spelman College faculty among the academic collaborators paired with the selected Atlanta-area artist fellows. The multidisciplinary showcase will feature an evening of exhibits, performance and conversation with faculty and artists, their students and the community. Attendees can see “SwitchCodes #3,” a collaborative performance series by T. Lang, associate professor and founding chair of Spelman’s dance performance and choreography program, and Adam Mirza, assistant professor of composition at Emory.
7 p.m. Dec. 3-4, Paideia Black Box Theater & Art Lobby, 1509 S. Ponce de Leon Ave. NE, Atlanta.
This event will feature dance and music, as well as selections from Komansé Dance Theater’s dance-on-film productions. Audiences can view a work in process by founder and artistic director Raianna Brown; Akeem J. Edwards, based in Jacksonville, Florida; and Rochelle Phillips, a Spelman College resident choreographer. Atlanta contemporary cellist Okorie “OKCello” Johnson will make a guest appearance.
Evening-length performances
Evening-length works are an opportunity to sit back and become familiar with the style of one choreographer and the technical skill and artistry of an ensemble of dancers while a story or idea unfolds over the course of an hour or two of dance.
Bluebird Uncaged, “Sterling’s Path 2025″
2 and 5 p.m. Nov. 29, at Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre, White Box, 75 Bennett St. NW, Atlanta.
Atlanta-based dancer Rebekah Diaddigo founded Bluebird Uncaged in 2012, with a mission to share Christian faith and community through dance. Bluebird Uncaged’s winter fairy tale has become an annual family-friendly holiday event infused with a universal message about finding hope and strength in challenging times. This multimedia theatrical dance production follows the story of a young girl as she fights to free a magical bird in order to save her town from a marauding dragon.
Meg Gourley, “In Light of These Regrets”
7 p.m. Dec. 6, and 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. Dec. 7, Decatur School of Ballet, 141 Sams St., Suite C, Decatur.
A member of Atlanta-based Kit Modus, Meg Gourley has had her choreography included in DanceATL’s interdisciplinary incubator A.M. Collaborative and Excuse the Art, an emerging artist showcase produced by Fly on a Wall. This new immersive performance — which will make use of the entire building, with audience seats changing over the course of the show — is part of Gourley’s work toward her M.F.A. in dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Site-specific performances
Dance performances in public spaces bring together dedicated connoisseurs with the curious, intrigued by new faces and activity in a familiar space. Both of the events listed her take place in bustling hubs within the city, in proximity to restaurants and other attractions. Designed to allow allowing audiences to come and go, these shows are easy to blend into an afternoon or evening out on the town.
Streaming nightly in the studio windows through Nov. 30, free. Core Dance Studios, 133 Sycamore St., Decatur.
Part of Core Dance’s inside:out programming, designed to activate the square in downtown Decatur with video installations that document the art and process of artistic director Sue Schroeder and Core Dance artists. In “Breath,” Schroeder and her collaborators explore breath as an individual embodied experience and a terrestrial phenomenon.
Noon-5 p.m. Dec. 4-6, free with museum admission. National Center for Civil and Human Rights, 100 Ivan Allen Blvd., Atlanta.
Inspired by Phil Freelon’s architectural design for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, “Singing Sun” engages with how the building choreographs the patron’s journey through the histories and stories told within the museum’s exhibits, allowing the play of natural light to illuminate that journey.
Improvisational and experimental performances
The shows in this category are part of the artists’ ongoing exploration of dance as a medium for experimentation. Staged encounters between dance and new texts, material constraints, disciplines and technologies create serendipitous opportunities for new ways of seeing for dancers and audiences.
8 p.m. Friday (pay what you can online or at the door). 2450 Piedmont Road NE, Atlanta.
In “Dreambody,” Fly on a Wall collective members Nicole Johnson, Jimmy Joyner and Sean Nguyen-Hilton invite the audience into the sometimes messy and often fascinating improvisational mode of collaboration they developed during their 16-day live installation piece “Cats in a Library.” That took place in the now-defunct MINT Gallery in 2021 as Atlanta and the rest of the world started to emerge from the worst days of pandemic lockdown. Concerned with the body in flux, vulnerable and fluid, undergoing transformation, “Dreambody” emerges from moment to moment as the artists respond to their immediate, prepared environment and to one another.
Corian Ellisor, “World Hold On”
6 p.m. Nov. 23, free. Goat Farm Arts Center, 1200 Foster St. NW, Atlanta.
Corian Ellisor, a faculty member and co-director of the Prime Company at Callanwolde School of Dance, was selected as Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology’s inaugural artist-in-residence. His work often melds dance and theater, using art as activism to create abstract narratives with gesture, drag, music, costumes and storytelling. This interactive performance will showcase the results of his collaboration with Georgia Tech’s Craft Lab, a campus maker space.
7 p.m. Dec. 4, 2450 Piedmont Road NE, Atlanta.
This is the last in a series of performances by Nicole Johnson — each coinciding with a full moon — in which she experiments with channeling and amplifying the resonance and connecting energy between a live performer and her audience. Limited to four audience participants, Channel 13 invites those who attend “to receive, remember or simply immerse (themselves) in the energy.”
Tap dance
Founded in 2018 by Vanessa Zabari, the Tap Rebels were Atlanta’s first professional tap dance company. Since taking their show on the road to Dubai in 2022, the company has been teaching classes but not performing here. At 1 p.m. Dec. 7, however, the Tap Rebels are back with the appropriately titled “The Rhythm Returns” at City Dance & Music.
Flamenco
A form that builds instant community through dance and music, flamenco originated in bars and public squares. While it has evolved into a theatrical art form, it remains connected to those roots. On Friday and Dec. 5 and 19, Spanish restaurant La Metro at Ponce City Market will host Flamenco Fridays from 7-9 p.m.
Robin Wharton studied dance at the School of American Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. As an undergraduate at Tulane University in New Orleans, she was a member of the Newcomb Dance Company. In addition to a Bachelor of Arts in English from Tulane, Robin holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in English, both from the University of Georgia.
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