While watching Coco Chanel: A Life in Fashion, Atlanta Ballet’s full-length production that premiered last month, Artistic Director Gennadi Nedvigin got an idea. He would invite resident choreographer Claudia Schreier to create a new work for the 2024-25 season set to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.
It was one of many decisions Nedvigin has made in recent months to program the company’s upcoming season, which was announced today.
The connection between Coco Chanel and The Rite of Spring isn’t as unlikely as it seems. Act II of Coco Chanel includes a dramatic scene with Igor Stravinsky (one of Chanel’s many lovers) at the piano and a group of dancers behind him clad in costumes reminiscent of Vaslav Nijinsky’s groundbreaking The Rite of Spring, for which Stravinsky wrote the score.
Nijinsky’s unconventional, angular choreography and the work’s nonballetic costumes caused angry pandemonium among the audience at the ballet’s 1913 Paris premiere. Since then, scores of choreographers have set ballets to the driving, rhythmically challenging score.
In an exclusive interview with ArtsATL, Nedvigin said he felt Schreier could tackle the score because of her acute and sensitive musicality, seen in works like her Pleiades Dances. She said yes right away.
Schreier’s Rite of Spring will have its world premiere the weekends of February 7 through February 15, 2025. It will share the program with a reprise of Helgi Tomasson’s 7 for Eight, an elegant love letter to Bach that Nedvigin performed many times at San Francisco Ballet and which Atlanta Ballet first presented seven years ago.
According to Nedvigin, because audiences have been growing post-pandemic, the company will perform that mixed bill over two weekends, the way Coco Chanel was programmed in February 2024. This is a new programming strategy for the company designed to increase attendance. Traditionally, Atlanta Ballet has performed each program for one weekend only.
Coco Chanel also inspired Nedvigin to invite the ballet’s choreographer, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, to create another work for the company. “I gave Annabelle time to work with the dancers,” during the staging of Coco Chanel, Nedvigin said. (Lopez Ochoa created Coco Chanel in Hong Kong for the Hong Kong Ballet, the first company to perform the international co-production.) “I wanted her to be comfortable, to trust us as a company. She agreed without hesitation.”
Her new ballet will close the 2024-25 season May 9 through May 11, paired with Alexander Ekman’s Tuplet, an edgy, percussive work set to an electronic score, and Liam Scarlett’s Catch set to music by Philip Glass, which Atlanta Ballet premiered in 2019.
Nedvigin has commissioned Kiyon Ross to create the season’s third world premiere. Atlantans first saw Ross’ neoclassical choreography in 2019 in Sum Stravinsky, which ArtsATL’s dance writer Kathleen Wessel described as “crisp and refreshing.”
The new Ross work will be one of three ballets on the season’s opening program, September 13 through September 15, joining Stanton Welch’s Tu Tu, set to Ravel and last seen here six years ago, and Lar Lubovitch’s jazzy Elemental Brubeck, most recently presented by the company in 2018. Nedvigin says he is excited to see how works from the existing repertoire complement the new works.
“It’s important for the dancers to be enriched by different styles. With Tuplet, for instance, you have contemporary modern moves laid onto classically trained dancers. It’s beautiful when it’s done well,” he said.
George Balanchine’s production of Coppélia, which New York City Ballet premiered in 1974, is entering Atlanta Ballet’s repertoire for the first time March 21 through March 23, 2025. The comedy ballet, originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon and first seen in Paris in 1870, has been revised and performed by many companies since. Set to music by Léo Delibes, it tells the story of an eccentric toymaker, his female creation and her unwitting suitor.
Pacific Northwest Ballet recently updated the Balanchine version with new scenery and costumes. “Atlanta needs to see this version because it’s so beautiful,” Nedvigin said, “plus we know audiences like full-length ballets.” Students of Atlanta Ballet’s Centre for Dance Education, and members of Atlanta Ballet 2, will perform with the main company.
Coppélia holds a special place in Nedvigin’s heart. He grew up dancing various roles as a student in the Bolshoi Ballet Academy and many years later performed San Francisco Ballet’s production when he was a principal there. It was one of his last performances with that company before he joined Atlanta Ballet as artistic director in 2016. “In this ballet, you can be a bit foolish on stage,” he said.
Coppélia also has a history at Atlanta Ballet. The company performed the Saint-Léon version in 1986, and a new production by Dennis Nahat in 1998.
Yuri Possokhov’s critically acclaimed The Nutcracker will be back for the holidays, December 1 through December 26, and the company’s family ballet in 2025 will be The Swan Princess, created by Bruce Wells. Designed for young audiences, the one-act ballet is based on Swan Lake and includes narration. It will be performed by Atlanta Ballet 2 at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center on February 15 and February 16.
“The dancers are performing at their highest level technically now,” Nedvigin said. They maintained their technique during the pandemic lockdown, he explained, because the Atlanta Ballet board made it possible for them to remain fully employed. “We have been able to grow the company” since the pandemic he says, with the dancers now performing at “a world-class level. I feel they can tackle anything and bring the world to Atlanta.”
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Gillian Anne Renault has been an ArtsATL contributor since 2012 and senior editor for Art+Design and Dance since 2021. She has covered dance for the Los Angeles Daily News, Herald Examiner and Ballet News and on radio stations such as KCRW, the NPR affiliate in Santa Monica, California. Many years ago, she was awarded an NEA Fellowship to attend American Dance Festival’s Dance Criticism program.
