Tag: dance

Robert “Bobby” Barnett, a longtime Atlanta Ballet artistic director, turned 101 this month. “My wife and I moved here in 1958 after retiring from the New York City Ballet,” he says. Then, Bobby and his wife, Virginia (“Ginger”), became principal dancers and associate directors for the Atlanta Civic Ballet.

One of the most gratifying aspects of my years at WABE was connecting listeners to our city’s cultural events. A vibrant arts community can uplift and enrich the lives of Atlantans. The challenge today is to help these organizations thrive: Funding is essential from various sources. With money allocated to the arts, we can all take pride in a city made greater by its cultural organizations.

When Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to the Fox Theatre February 11 to 15, the company will close each show with Revelations, as it has done every year since it started performing here in 1976. The ballet, choreographed by Ailey and inspired by his “blood memories” of growing up in the Baptist church in Texas, has become synonymous with the modern dance company’s vivid and emotional work.

Nonprofit arts organizations in metro Atlanta are facing financial challenges as government grants, corporate sponsorships, and Covid-era relief funding have dried up while costs have risen and audience participation remains below pre-pandemic levels. In response, arts leaders have banded together through weekly meetings and the coalition Arts Capital | Atlanta, which seeks to raise $100 million to stabilize the sector and ensure smaller organizations in particular can survive.

Creativity is one of life’s great mysteries. But artists of every genre recognize it when the moment of inspiration hits them. We spoke to 16 Atlanta artists about their creative processes—visual artists, dancers, musicians, actors, and more. What ignites their creativity? How do they turn an idea into art? How do they overcome a creative block? Their answers are illuminating, sometimes humorous and often profound.

Atlanta’s arts season is bursting with creativity, from the High Museum’s landmark exhibition of Minnie Evans to bold new takes on Balanchine, Bram Stoker, and Tennessee Williams. Here's your 2025 fall arts calendar.

Not long after he had taken over as executive director at Atlanta Ballet in 2021, Tom West and his board of directors had to make one of the toughest decisions in the company’s history. Last August, they did something rather startling: They sold their headquarters—the Michael C. Carlos Dance Centre—for $8.3 million to Faropoint, a New Jersey real-estate investment firm.

Ever since Bad Bunny's DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS released in January, salsa dancing has been given an unlikely footing across metro Atlanta and beyond. Longtime dance instructor Carrie Thomas says she never would have guessed that she would be teaching salsa outside of the city limits. And yet these days, students are flocking to her private salsa classes around Acworth, Dallas, Marietta, and Douglasville.

There's been a plethora of projects Sue Schroeder has created since reshaping her dance company four years ago. Through collaborations at home and abroad, Schroeder, 67, has discovered new ways to amplify her artistic voice and bring Atlanta more deeply into the conversation around experimental, movement-based art.

Dr. Ivan Pulinkala arrived as a dance professor at Kennesaw State University in 2005 with a big job: Build the university a dance department. He started with a dance minor, then a dance major, and then, in 2012, an entire department. It’s since become the largest collegiate dance program in Georgia and highly regarded throughout the dance world.