Gennadi Nedvigin is haunted by the pandemic. As artistic director of Atlanta Ballet, he watched the company’s 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons evaporate and his dancers struggle to maintain their strength and technique, while ballets he had hoped to bring into the repertory got put on ice.
The company slowly gained strength in 2021-22 and has been soaring in the current 2022-23 season, but only now does Nedvigin feel his feet are firmly on post-pandemic ground.
Which is why he is “thrilled, excited and proud” to talk about the company’s 2023-24 season. In his view Atlanta Ballet is not only back in full form but has entered a new era. “We treasure much more the works we bring into the company now,” he told ArtsATL recently in a Zoom call, “because we realize how quickly things can change, how fragile art is and how easily it can be disrupted.”
The line-up for the 2023-24 season includes four world premieres, one each by choreographer-in-residence Claudia Schreier, who is renegotiating her contract for three more years in that position; Garrett Smith, who has created works for companies such as The Bolshoi Ballet, Houston Ballet and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal; Brazilian choreographer Juliano Nuñes, choreographer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Ballet who has created works for Ballet Flanders and Nederlands Dans Theater 2; and company member Sergio Masero, whose critically-acclaimed Schubertiada premiered with Atlanta Ballet in May 2022.
The season also features two full-length narrative ballets: the North American premiere of Coco Chanel: The Life of a Fashion Icon (previously announced) and Johan Kobborg’s production of the August Bournonville masterpiece La Sylphide which Atlanta Ballet first performed in 2019. La Sylphide premiered in 1836 and has been reimagined by different choreographers over the years. Still, the Bournonville style, with its dark, romantic enchantment and delicate but demanding jump sequences, continues to challenge dancers and remind audiences of ballet’s rich history.
Nedvigin describes the development of the new season in terms of pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. Choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa was already working on Coco Chanel before the lockdown, but it wasn’t until Nedvigin began talking with Septime Webre, artistic director of Hong Kong Ballet, in 2021 that Atlanta Ballet became a co-producer of the work with Hong Kong Ballet and Australia’s Queensland Ballet.
Rich with production values, the ballet had its world premiere in Hong Kong in March and will be presented by Atlanta Ballet in February 2024.
Another “before” discussion was with Nuñes who was creating a work for the company’s 2019-20 season. It was a Covid casualty. After the pandemic, he and Nedvigin scrapped the original idea and started over. The new work will premiere on the May 2024 mixed bill.
As the title of the company’s virtual 2021 program Silver Linings suggested, the lockdown had an upside for several budding choreographers in the company, Masero among them. “Sergio was the first to raise his hand when we invited the dancers to step forward and create a work for the company,” Nedvigin says. Masero now has two ballets in the company’s repertory. He and Nedgivin are already discussing musical choices for the third.
Nedvigin says he’s been careful post-pandemic to give the dancers time to regain their strength after almost two years of not performing. “They were deprived of moving freely for so long,” he says. “I didn’t want to bring on works that they weren’t ready to do. I believe this season they are ready to take on more.”
That was no doubt in his mind when he and choreographer Garrett Smith, known for his athletic, experimental style, reconnected last year. Smith’s new work will be on the March 2024 mixed bill, along with Masero’s ballet and a reprise of Mark Morris’ Sandpaper Ballet, which the company first performed in 2019.
Nedvigin was a dancer with the San Francisco Ballet when Morris set Sandpaper Ballet on that company in 1999. In fact, Nedvigin danced in every ballet Morris created for that company and was always drawn to Morris’ musicality. Set to instantly hummable music by 20th century American “pops” composer Leroy Anderson, Sandpaper Ballet is an important part of Atlanta Ballet’s repertory, Nedvigin says, because it has a large cast. In March 2024, two different casts, 25 in each, will perform the work. “It’s an opportunity to showcase the whole company,” he says.
Another choreographer known for her musicality is choreographer-in-residence Schreier. Her abstract works Carnivale, Fauna and Pleiades Dances have been well received in Atlanta but Nedvigin is encouraging her to develop narrative works. She has already stretched those creative muscles, having recently choreographed a narrative work, The Source, for Miami City Ballet. Her next world premiere for Atlanta Ballet will be presented this month, with another slated for May 2024.
Also scheduled for the 2023-24 season are the family ballet Cinderella, to be performed by Atlanta Ballet 2 in March 2024, and a reprise of Yuri Possokhov’s critically-acclaimed The Nutcracker in December 2024.
The 2023-24 season features a wealth of different styles and movement vocabularies. “That’s always been my goal, and for the dancers to be comfortable in every style,” Nedvigin says. “Now we can finally do that. We were so limited during the pandemic. Dancers couldn’t even touch each other. Now we are opening up and can be creative again.”
::
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.
