Atlanta Arts category interest

Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre has moved through many changes and challenges this year. Its fall season will reveal how resilient and creative the company continues to be.

For the second year in a row, Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre will not be performing the holiday favorite Marley Was Dead, To Begin With. A unique take on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the ballet was choreographed by original “Terminator” Heath Gill and premiered on film in 2020 and live on stage in 2021.

Instead, the company’ fall 2024 season comprises two multi-weekend runs — one at TULA Art Center, the company’s Buckhead location, and one at The Pavilion at Art Farm at Serenbe. They include four world premieres and a bittersweet farewell to another company co-founder, Rachel Van Buskirk.

Terminus Artistic Director John Welker said the programming is all about “new dancers, new voices.”

TMBT’s new recruits include Amalie Chase, who was a company proté​​gé​ during the 2023-24 season; Alex Gonzaga​, who has appeared several times as a guest artist; and Lenai Wilkerson, who made her way to Atlanta from Washington, D.C., by way of Ballet Hispánico and Cincinnati Ballet. Georgia Dalton and Elizabeth Labovitz, who were themselves new faces just last year, round out the company roster.

Van Buskirk will perform on the Out of the Box II program at the company’s intimate, immersive white-box space at TULA, taking her final bows with the company on September 22. After her departure, Christian Clark will be the only one of the five co-founders still performing with the company.

Out of the Box II is scheduled for six shows over two weekends — September 14 and September 15 and September 21 and September 22 — at TMBT’s base of operations in Buckhead. The bill includes two of the four new works the company commissioned for this season, one by Shane Urton, a dancer with the Royal Ballet of Flanders, and the other by Jennifer Archibald, choreographer-in-residence at Cincinnati Ballet. Urton’s piece had a successful and tantalizing work-in-progress showing during the ensemble’s inaugural Out of the Box series last year.

Welker previously commissioned a work from Archibald for Atlanta Ballet’s Wabi Sabi series 10 years ago. He said having the opportunity to work with her both when she was first making a name for herself as a choreographer and now that she is an established artistic voice has created a wonderful full-circle moment: “It is so inspiring to watch her process, to see how the dancers respond to her,” he says.

Kryptos, the second bill, will comprise 12 shows over three weekends — October 17 through October 20, and October 24 through October 27 and October 31 through November 3 — at Art Farm at Serenbe’s outdoor performance venue. Welker said Gill, who is now the rehearsal director at Orlando Ballet, is creating a “mystery-themed” ballet.

It will debut on the Kryptos program alongside a new piece from Princess Grace Award-winner Jimmy Orrante, whom Welker commissioned for the company after being impressed by his work for advanced students in the Terminus Modern Ballet School.

Welker laughingly says that working Gill’s TMBT commission into the former member’s packed schedule was a logistical challenge. “He may not even make it to his own premiere,” Welker says. Gill’s calendar is also part of the reason why Terminus will not be reviving Marley Was Dead. With a brand new cast on the TMBT side and Gill’s obligations to Orlando Ballet during its own busy Nutcracker season, Welker didn’t see a way to make Marley Was Dead work this year.

As Welker describes it, both the company and the school have settled into the studios, office and performance space at TULA Arts Center, “kind of like a sophomore in high school.” Consequently, he sees the fall season as an opportunity to build on the foundation that Terminus laid with its existing repertoire by commissioning new ballets that will bring new company members into the organizational fold.

“These dancers get to own this work that is created for them,” Welker says. “We have found our voice internally; so we can broaden our outreach and bring new people into the room.”

Welker went on to say that exploring TMBT’s internal voice through restaging existing repertoire continues to be important as well. That’s one way Gill and Van Buskirk will remain a core part of “the conversation we have with new choreographers and new dancers about who we are and what we’re doing.”

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