Category Archives: Modern Dance

RAIIN Dance Theater: in Human

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I caught a sort of working preview of some of Raianna Brown’s choreography in RAIIN Dance Theater’s “in Human” at group performance concert put together by Nadya Zeitlin at the Midtown Players Club last May and I thought that it was pretty good. Because it was a small excerpt with only a few dancers without any kind of lighting or set pieces, I wasn’t quite expecting the remarkably large production that they put on last night. Remarkably large and really quite good – exceptionally good if you consider that these were mostly semi-professionals and students, the largest proportion of whom are studying things like engineering or psychology and are not dance majors.
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Ailey II

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I didn’t really know what to expect of the performance last night by Ailey II at the Rialto Center. I knew that Spelman professor and local choreographer Juel D. Lane had a piece in the show, but I otherwise didn’t know who else was programmed. It’s a junior company for developing dancers, so I didn’t expect the level of performance that I’ve seen come from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company, but I was pretty sure that it would be an enjoyable show. I had some complaints, but I wasn’t disappointed at all.
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The Modern Atlanta Dance Festival

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According to the “About” section of the MAD Festival’s Facebook page, “The annual Modern Atlanta Dance Festival (MAD) presents the best of Atlanta’s modern/contemporary dance.” This year’s lineup, however, was bookended by a couple of choreographers from outside of the Metro area, Melissa Pihos and Sarah Wildes Arnette, both of whom are assistant professors of dance at Valdosta State University. If, perhaps, this goes against the mission statement of the festival, I think that there is enough value to creating the opportunity for Atlanta audiences to see artists from elsewhere in Georgia to justify the geographic expansion. I don’t think that it betrays the sense of the festival’s localness to look outside of the economic domain of the State’s largest metropolitan area, so long as it doesn’t stray too much beyond the boundaries of the State. That said, I’d love to see a separate Southeastern regional dance festival in Atlanta, though I wonder if there’s really a big enough audience for it or, for that matter, a good funding source.
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Dance Canvas: Introducing the Next Generation

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Dance Canvas’ “Introducing the Next Generation” is an annual dance concert put together to showcase the works of new and developing choreographers. I’ve been twice before (it would have been three but for the snow last year) and have generally found it enjoyable. Since it features a number of different choreographers and dancers, it can be a mixed bag, but I’ve always found at least one or two pieces in the bunch that I really enjoyed and even the worst of it generally isn’t that bad. This evenings’ collection of works did have some that I didn’t particularly enjoy, but there were some that I really liked.
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Full Radius Dance: Silver

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Full Radius’ concert program at 7 Stages was titled Silver in honor of the company’s 25th anniversary. This prompted me to look up the traditional gift materials for each anniversary and I found that the tradition for the third anniversary is leather. Unfortunately, Artistic Director Douglas Scott didn’t include anything on the program from their third anniversary show, which must have been pretty wild.
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Core Dance: Life Interrupted: When fear and hysteria diminish humanity

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The first time that I saw anything by Core or Sue Schroeder was a restaging of her “Corazón Abriendo” in late 2010. I picked up my ticket the day of the show after having my original plans for the evening fall through. This was before the trauma that lead to me going to nearly every show of anything that could be even remotely good that I could manage and I was just starting to check out what the Atlanta dance scene had to offer. I wasn’t expecting much; it was about Mayan culture in Chiapas and I suspected that it would probably be a romantic exoticization. Instead it was actually an well produced and thoughtful expression of a rather well-informed, first-hand impression of the region. I’ve seen quite a lot of Core’s work since then but it had remained my favorite of Schroeder’s work by far until this evening.
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The Alvin Ailey American Dance Company

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When I saw that the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company was going to be performing new works by Mauro Bigonzetti and Kyle Abraham this year, my reaction was something along the lines of, “Yes, please!” And it happened that the only performance of these pieces was on Saturday, which meant I could actually go and not worry about being wiped out from work or wiped out at work the next day. The Bigonzetti wasn’t all that I hoped that it would be, but the Abraham more than made up for it and this evening’s show ended with a particularly strong performance of Ailey’s “Revelations,” so I’m more than happy with the show.
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