Atlanta’s Fall for Fall Dance Festival started during Covid and this year — its third iteration — the three-night event featured works by more than 30 choreographers, most of them based in Atlanta.
Dancer/choreographer Catherine Messina is the festival’s mastermind and convener, and last weekend her efforts came together in three performances at three different outdoor locations: Underground Atlanta on Friday, Ormewood Church on Saturday, and on Sunday at Uptown Atlanta.
It’s impossible to adequately cover all 34 works presented, but to provide a taste of the festival, ArtsATL assigned a different dance reviewer to each performance. Reviews of Friday and Saturday’s lineup follow. Sunday’s review will run tomorrow.
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Friday — by Gillian Anne Renault
The Underground Atlanta neighborhood at night can be sketchy, but once the panhandler was quietly escorted away from the audience, and the small but enthusiastic crowd got used to street sounds and the pounding of music nearby, we settled in to watch 11 dance works, most of them in the contemporary/modern vein.
Leo Briggs’ dreamBOY (this is a ghost story) came to life when Briggs gave a powerful monologue about three dreams: two about seeing ghosts and one about Ben Hopkins, part of the punk duo PWR BTTM, which was a victim of cancel culture. What started as a funny story about seeing J.K. Rowling’s ghost in the grocery store got a lot more serious when the phantom was that of Matthew Shepard. Briggs’ casual telling of the tale while eating grapes drew the audience into a tough subject without sermonizing. Atlanta poet HG Gruebmeyer wrote the script.
An excerpt from Permanence by wldflwr (Tamara Leigh, Dale Ratcliff and Nikki Theroux) was a beautifully structured and well-developed work that emphasized connection and lack thereof. One dancer gestured repeatedly above another’s head as if aiming for a hug but embracing only empty air, a movement theme reprised throughout the work. A few real hugs ensued. The fluid transitions from solos to duets and unison work along with an elegant use of space revealed both depth and texture.
Among the solos, Patsy Collins’ brief Paroxysm No. 1 highlighted her fine technique and compelling stage presence with flung gestures of head, arms and upper body.
Amanda Sieradzki and Maddie Kurtz’s another dance about muscles was a funny rundown of how modern dancers are trained in floor work, and the Uprising Dance Company, featuring nine dancers of color in jeans and sneakers, fused energized street dance with bouncing jumps and formations.
Jodie Jernigan and Caleigh Santa Maria flirted with fashionable poses and too many sunglasses in the breezy It’s Always Sunny and Nadya Zeitlin reprised her Archs & Textures duet for Raina Mitchell and Meg Gourley.
The 90-minute performance closed with RyderDance performing Jordan Ryder’s Garage. It featured dynamic contact among the seven dancers: for instance, holding hands in an uneven, tensile circle, or one dancer being lifted gently by the others. Aryanna Allen was a standout in this and dreamBOY.
Every choreographer who applied to Fall for Fall was accepted, which meant that the level of both choreographic craft and performance varied considerably on Friday. The event seemed designed primarily as a platform for choreographers to show their work, not an invitation for Atlanta audiences to experience the best of the city’s contemporary dance scene.
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Saturday — by Robin Wharton
This two-hour program was strong overall, and three works in particular clearly demonstrated how adopting a juried selection process might still produce an aesthetically diverse, culturally inclusive and technically challenging bill. At the same time, Fall for Fall’s partnership with sponsor Neighborhood Ballet evidenced one way that Messina has successfully leveraged inclusion and diversity to extend the festival’s reach.
The performance opened with . . . I feel that, which combined structured improvisation, spoken word and set phrases in what choreographer Sammy Spriggs described as a “rumination on … the revolutionary nature of finding joy and pleasure in the body.” The “collaborating performers” — Briggs, Sharon Carelock, Jacque Pritz and M Wu — all brought beautifully expressive technique and impeccable comedic timing to an exploration of the dynamics of care, one-upmanship and play that are so often undercurrents in the artistic process.
The piece opened with Briggs and Pritz in dialogue, one saying “I feel” and then offering a short movement phrase the other repeated. Carelock and Wu joined initially as observers and commentators, then as participants. The spoken and gestural banter was lovely and at times laugh-out-loud funny.
The duet WE ARE THEY opened in silence with choreographer billie james hawkains iii and another dancer locked in physical struggle, right hands grasping together between them, left hands pushing against the other dancer’s right shoulder. When they connected fully, their bodies gave a physical jolt, as if completing an electric circuit, and the score — chanting accompanied by spare percussive instrumentation — began.
Throughout, the dancers seemed to explore the dual meaning of struggling “with” — as something denoting either opposition or cooperation, depending on context. The work drew together social, ceremonial and performative aspects of dance to involve the audience as witnesses to what hawkains described as “true healing and true deliverance.”
Though billed as a work-in-progress, Atarius Armstrong’s nest nevertheless glowed with theatrical polish. According to Armstrong, the piece began as a reflection on the ongoing water crisis in his hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. Beautifully and simply costumed in loose fitting, off-white shirts and pants or shorts sparsely adorned with bright silk flowers, the four dancers — Audrey Crabtree, Emily Davis, Jenn Klammer and Pritz — worked through lyrical movement sequences with a heavy 50-foot rope. Images of submersion and emergence recalled scenes of drowning, birth and baptism.
In addition to the official festival program, the performance included three works performed by Rise City Dance, Neighborhood Ballet’s youth company, and choreographed by Fall for Fall Dance Festival artists. The inclusion of student performers ensured the event was well-attended by a diverse audience, comprising their friends and family in addition to the usual core of contemporary dance devotees one might expect to see at a show like this one.
While a different approach to curation might create greater consistency in the programming, one that is too exclusive risks sacrificing some conditions that have allowed Fall for Fall to flourish. As the festival matures, Messina will surely approach with typically thoughtful creativity the question of how to balance the preferences of critics and dance connoisseurs with the need to expand the audience for contemporary dance in Atlanta.
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Gillian Anne Renault is a senior editor for ArtsATL, and has covered dance for the website since 2012. Robin Wharton studied dance at the School of American Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. As an undergraduate at Tulane University in New Orleans, she was a member of the Newcomb Dance Company. In addition to a Bachelor of Arts in English from Tulane, Robin holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in English, both from the University of Georgia.
