For 13 years, Heath Gill has entertained Atlanta audiences in a series of dramatic and comedic roles, brilliantly embodying characters as diverse as the feisty Mercutio in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s “Roméo et Juliette,” the intrepid hero Kilroy in Helen Pickett’s “Camino Real,” a quirky MC in Ohad Naharin’s “Minus 16″ and a slapstick, fun-loving buddy in Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre’s joyful “Roam.”
“I like roles where you get to go on a journey,” Gill says. “It’s so rich to live in another person’s psyche for a while.”
Credit: Daylilies Photography
Credit: Daylilies Photography
He can get romantic too, as he did in Tara Lee’s beautiful pas de deux, “Retrograde Waltz,” which he performed with his wife Jackie Nash Gill earlier this year.
But there won’t be any more roles like this for Gill. He is retiring. His last performances as a dancer will be in his own full-evening ballet “LORE” through Oct. 30 at Serenbe’s Wildflower Meadow.
His audiences might shed a tear or two, but Gill, 33, is delighted to be entering a new phase of his career. He plans to devote his considerable energy to choreography, coaching, and working as Terminus’ production director, a role he has enjoyed since co-founding the company in 2017.
Gill has already choreographed 11 ballets, some for Atlanta Ballet’s now defunct mini-company Wabi Sabi — he danced with Atlanta Ballet for six years — some for Terminus and most recently works commissioned by Kennesaw State University’s KSU Dance Co. and Orlando Ballet 2.
“LORE” was his first full-evening narrative work and the second new work to premiere during Terminus’ defining first season. He expanded the ballet in 2019.
“If I’m honest with myself, I have been ready to do this for a while,” Gill said recently in a Zoom chat. “I find myself drawing more and more joy from creating work and coaching others. I wouldn’t have been a dancer just because I enjoy dancing. I am a collaborative artist. I like to invite people people into my world, tell them what I’m dreaming of and create something fun together.”
Gill sees this transition as an opportunity to expand. “There’s a certain degree of self-centeredness you have to have as a dancer. To perform well, you have to be narrowly focused and dedicated. You have to take care of your body, know the material.” Now he has different goals — discovering new movement, pushing boundaries, inspiring young dancers, and helping his co-founders further develop Terminus as a strong, innovative, professional company.
He and Rachel Van Buskirk were frequent partners at Atlanta Ballet, reveling in the contemporary works that then artistic director John McFall added to the repertoire. They danced together in David Bintley’s “Carmina Burana” and many other ballets and have continued to work together at Terminus.
“To this day, Heath has such passion and energy on stage, sharing his unbridled enthusiasm with his partners and the audience,” Van Buskirk says. “He has a natural ability to engage and pull people into his storytelling. Comedic timing is no easy thing to master. And having a master of it sharing his gift with students and young dancers, how lucky are they!”
Narrative ballets have always appealed to Gill, as both a dancer and dance maker. He shone in roles such as the hapless and terrified Harker in Michael Pink’s creepy “Dracula” for Atlanta Ballet. His own ballets, among them “Marley Was Dead to Begin With,” “Confronting Genius” and “LORE,” favor story and character over highly technical pas de deux and virtuoso variations.
As Gill explains, many of the full-length story ballets in which he performed — including “Dracula” and Maillot’s starkly modern “Roméo et Juliette” (both created in 1996) — are firmly grounded in classic ballet technique, where narrative is often paused to allow for virtuoso pas de deux and variations that show off the dancers’ technique.
Helen Pickett’s edgier, cutting-edge ballets “The Exiled” and “Camino Real,” created for Atlanta Ballet in the 2013-14 and 2015-16 seasons respectively, pushed the boundaries of ballet further in ways that gave flight to Gill’s dramatic capabilities.
Gill wants to introduce more contemporary, naturalistic movement vocabulary into his narrative works. “LORE” is a great example. None of the women is on pointe and the story telling is free of traditional ballet’s often stiff and formal mime. Even though there are lifts — Gill loves partnering — and the dancers toss in a double tour en l’air, pirouette or grand jeté every so often, the vocabulary includes a lot of gestural material.
Inspired by Pickett and other 21st century choreographers, Gill also wants to experiment with the spoken word, as he did in his holiday ballet “Marley Was Dead To Begin With,” which Terminus will reprise later this year.
Gill’s career as a dancer has not been easy. He’s the first to admit his feet could be more flexible, his legs straighter, his physique more ballet appropriate.
After his first year in Atlanta Ballet’s fellowship program, McFall suggested he should look for a job elsewhere when his fellowship ended. This blunt assessment of his work drove him to work even harder in his second year. By the time his contract was up, McFall had brought Pickett on board as resident choreographer and was championing the kind of ballets that called for an adventurous spirit, a willingness to act and even speak on stage. Gill was invited to stay. In 2014, Dance Magazine recognized him as one of its “25 to Watch.”
Another turning point occurred when Gennadi Nedvigin took over as Atlanta Ballet’s artistic director in 2016 and Gill’s contract was not renewed. The last ballet he performed with the company was “Camino Real.”
In the wake of Nedvigin’s hiring, several of the company’s star dancers left of their own accord, including Van Buskirk, Christian Clark, Tara Lee and John Welker. The five of them founded Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre in 2017, building it together, piece by piece, year by year.
At every juncture, Gill’s passion for the art form overrode seemingly unconquerable obstacles.
“I feel a true measure of what Heath’s accomplished throughout his career is that he never possessed a ballet dancer’s physique,” says Welker, Terminus’ artistic director, “but by his work ethic, passion and sheer determination he became an accomplished ballet dancer, had an amazing professional dance career, and in the process never gave in to accepting ballet’s status quo.”
It seems fitting that Gill’s final performances will be in “LORE,” a story about a tight-knit community, family, legacy and the way traditions evolve and pass from one generation to the next.
Credit: Daylilies Photography
Credit: Daylilies Photography
As choreographer, performer and production director for “LORE,” Gill has had little time to process his feelings about his retirement but knows the leave taking will be bittersweet. “There is nothing like being on stage, sharing your energy with an audience,” he says. “Of course, I will miss that.”
Terminus will perform “LORE” on the Wildflower Meadow outdoor stage over two weekends, October 21-23 and 28-30. Celebrating Gill will be his many fans and his Terminus colleagues, including Welker. “I’ll be amongst the many shouting ‘bravo Heath!’ at the top of my lungs at the end of every performance,” he says.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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