Dance - Come together

For too long, Atlanta’s Ballethnic Dance Company has coasted on its two cash cows: The Urban Nutcracker in the winter and The Leopard’s Tale in the spring. Both are accomplished shows, but Ballethnic is too talented and innovative to shy away from creating new work. So let’s hope this week’s premiere of Epiphany marks the end of fallow days.

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Epiphany showcases the best of Ballethnic’s ideals: fusing live performances of gospel and jazz with ballet, modern and found movement to create a layered sense of “community as art.” Ballethnic’s professional company will share the stage with student and community dancers, including seniors from the H.J.C. Bowden Senior Center, all dancing to live music performed by the Full Circle Jazz Band, the Shaw Temple A.M.E. Mass Choir and vocalist Najuma of Urban Griot.

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That’s a lot for artistic directors Waverly T. Lucas II and Nena Gilreath to blend together.

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Since the days of Nijinsky, choreographers have mixed ballet with other dance forms. But sometimes, the results can produce awkward monstrosities in which the ballet discipline clenches the life out of more energetic dance forms.

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But fusion is what Ballethnic does best. And with Epiphany, the company pulls it off. In the river baptismal “Already Been to the Water,” ballerinas en pointe bend their backs and flutter their hands, while male dancers succumb to wild, undulating energies. Partnered in the jazz number “Misty,” the male and female dancers release into soft, seductive lines.

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Ballethnic’s Epiphany showcases individual elements and melds them into themes of greater unity. As in jazz, Epiphany finds space for each element — each dancer, each musical form, each school of movement. Through gospel, Epiphany affirms the dependence of all those on each other.