While Atlanta's cultural scene largely retrenched during the recession, the discipline of dance grew by literal leaps and bounds.
It takes another bold step forward next week as the Rialto Center for the Arts presents Off the Edge, billed as a "contemporary dance experience."
The ambitious, multi-part program that focused on emerging contemporary movement artists would have been promoted simply as a dance festival in almost any other situation. But its unconventional curator, Lauri Stallings of gloATL, one of the groups that has propelled the city's dance scene into a new era of artistry and reach, insisted that it have more resonance than a typical series featuring here-today-back-on-the-road-tomorrow touring troupes.
Stallings and Rialto director Leslie Gordon, who had the initial idea for Off the Edge and secured a $100,000 grant from the Atlanta-based Charles Loridans Foundation for two years of contemporary dance presentations, want this choreographic communion to keep Atlanta's dance momentum moving.
"In this community, we're well beyond [the question of], ‘Is it happening?'" Stallings said. "Oh, it's happening. Now we're to the point of, ‘OK, how do we sustain this?'"
Thus, in addition to ticketed guest artist performances Jan 27 and 28 at the Rialto, Off the Edge will include a host of free public programming: nine pre-show performances by Atlanta-based performers at sites in and around Woodruff Park; artist-to-artist exchanges (as opposed to the standard, but limited, master classes) hosted by local schools and ensembles; a conversation series; a weeklong residency at Kennesaw State University by Israeli dance "godmother" Rina Schenfeld; and a series of backstage exposure opportunities for high school dancers and more.
"Edge, I believe, has just the right timing," Stallings said. "Atlanta is very available and willing to experience [contemporary dance]. There's a high, very unusual level of [audience] curiosity and genuine need and want."
Long-time and new players on the metro area's dance scene have helped build that interest.
Atlanta Ballet, still frisky after 82 years, has busily commissioned premieres and set pieces by emerging choreographers on the country's longest continuously operating dance company. A new generation of movement artists and presenters such as gloATL, Dance Truck and Flux Projects have brought dance literally to the people, staging works in public places such as Lenox Square, the streets of Castleberry Hill and the Woodruff Arts Center's plaza.
University-run venues such as the Rialto and the Ferst Center for the Arts have mixed top contemporary touring troupes into their schedules. And long-time resident companies such as Decatur's Core Performance Company and Marietta's Georgia Ballet have taught and performed extensively.
Audiences queued up for more than 50 professional performances in 2011, whether on a proscenium stage or in the middle of an intersection, and that didn't count all the shows by ambitious college and community groups sprinkled across the metro area.
All Gordon felt was missing in the mix was exposure to emerging national and international talents that are making headlines at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts, New York's Joyce Theater or, closer to home, the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C. These are choreographers and groups that don't yet have the name recognition to hold down the 833-seat Rialto on their own.
Not yet, but soon, Gordon said. "What will be important to us is to gauge audience response from Off the Edge and ask, ‘Who would you like to see come back?'"
Fittingly enough, as trains rumbled by mere feet from gloATL's ramshackle, red-brick headquarters, Goodson Yard in west Midtown's Goat Farm artist colony, curator Stallings gave a scouting report of the visiting talent. Nearly two dozen choreographers and performers will appear during the ticketed International Artists Series on Jan. 27 and 28 alongside two resident university troupes.
Keigwin and Company. The New York ensemble was founded in 2003 by artistic director Larry Keigwin, who has gone on to create 16 dances that reflect his highly theatrical sensibility. Keigwin and Stallings met while working on the choreography for Julie Taymor's 2007 film "Across the Universe." The choreographer behind the new off-Broadway production of "Rent" at New World Stages, Keigwin is currently working at the Royal Ballet of New Zealand on a commissioned world premiere.
"Larry is probably one of the warmest, funnest people I know and it really comes across in his work," Stallings said. "It's a little twisted. A little bit odd, very playful, very physical."
Gallim Dance. Choreographer Andrea Miller founded her New York-based company, which has performed at the Joyce Theater, Jacob's Pillow and Spoleto Festival USA, in 2007. Gallim, which takes its name from the Hebrew word for waves, was featured on the cover of Dance magazine last April.
"Andrea is hugely influenced by Israeli culture and certainly by Ohad Naharin's work," Stallings said, speaking of the noted Israeli choreographer whose troupe Miller joined after graduating from the Julliard School. "But clearly she has an identity of her own. [Her choreography] is the most physical ... It kind of wipes itself all over the walls. Think of it as the largest brush hitting the canvas of the evening."
Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. Moving between New York and Chicago, Lubovitch has choreographed more than 100 highly technical but deeply humanistic dances for his New York-based company formed in 1968, which has performed in nearly all 50 states and more than 30 foreign countries.
"He's a master," Stallings said. "Everyone else is working toward that. He's very much there. He has a level of maturity, which means romance and loss and beauty and all those things that usually take time to cultivate through an art form. Lar is the bonding agent for Off the Edge's first time out."
Zoe/Juniper. Dancer-choreographer Zoe Scofield began a fruitful collaboration with visual artist Juniper Shuey in 2005, forming their Seattle company two years later. It will appear at New York's Dance Theater Workshop and Spoleto this year.
"Their work is a duet between media and dance," Stallings said. "Very much like glo, they find themselves [frequently performing] in nontraditional spaces, which include galleries. So the work has a sense of exhibition that's performance. As a community we are going to learn a great deal from both of them."
Bodytraffic. Co-founded by Lillian Barbeito and Tina Finkelman Berkett in 2007, the Venice, Calif., repertory company will mount a world premiere by Israeli choreographer Barak Marshall at the Gotham Dance Festival at the Joyce Theater in June.
"Bodytraffic was the vehicle to providing Atlanta with Barak Marshall's choreography," Stallings said. "No one is left out in his work. ... He brings these everyday occurrences to this level of audacity and it is kind of ridiculous. And yet he makes you laugh about it and really feel romantic about it."
gloATL. Founded in 2009, glo is known for dance that seeks to close the distance between artists and audiences, presenting contemporary choreography as a style of interactive art installation. Stallings protests that the company known for performing in unconventional spaces has plenty of experience dancing on proscenium stages, particularly when touring outside of Atlanta.
"We were on stage in the fall in Symphony Hall," she said, referring to "Maa," performed with ASO maestro Robert Spano and Georgia Tech's contemporary music ensemble Sonic Generator along with video projections. "Of course we were using every inch of the hall and the stage was covered in grass ..."
For Off the Edge, glo will premiere Stallings' "You Made It," a tribute to the "synergy" and "sharing and exchanging" the choreographer feels with Atlanta audiences.
Kennesaw State University Dance Company and Emory Dance. The two university dance programs were included not just as gesture of outreach, Stallings said, but because "they add nice letters to the syllabi."
She noted that Kennesaw dance program director Ivan Pulinkala, influenced by his Indian heritage, shows a "willingness to experiment" with his students. "There's a futuristic umbilical cord that I always feel pulling his work," including unusual use of technology and lighting.
Stallings praised Emory guest artist Kyle Abraham for his "very personal" storytelling. "Kyle has this everyday sense of space and time," she said of the leader of New York's acclaimed Abraham.In.Motion troupe. "There's a simplicity to it that's refreshing. Simple's good!"
Dance preview
Off the Edge
Jan. 23-29: at various metro locations. Most events are free. Full schedule, including Edge/Artists to Artists Exchanges and lecture series (Edge/Zak), at rialtocenter.org/EDGE.html.
Jan. 27-28: 6 p.m., Edge/Public at Woodruff Park, free performance pieces by nine metro groups; 8 p.m., Edge/International Artists Series at the Rialto Center for the Arts. Tickets: $28-$54 one night; $44-$88 both nights. 80 Forsyth St. N.W., Atlanta. Rialto box office: 404-413-9849.
Jan 29: Israeli prima ballerina Rina Schenfeld, 73, gives the Edge closing performance at 6 p.m. Goodson Yard, 1200 Foster St. N.W., Atlanta. Free.
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