Atlanta is a city of movers and visionaries. This is quite literally the case with its vibrant dance community. Dreamers abound in these parts, and dreams require movement if they’re ever to come true. Local dancers and choreographers share their work with the city year-round, but Atlanta’s warm spring weather always bears an especially fruitful season of performances. After two years of pandemic-related social distancing and isolation, performance venues and producers are fervently organizing events and reopening their spaces. Artists and audiences are hungry to return to the stage.
We urge you to open your mind and try something new - the performing arts!
This spring, one show particularly shines: Fly on a Wall’s annual works-in-progress showcase, Excuse the Art. The founding artists call Fly “a platform for innovative performance.” They formed the collective in 2014 when three friends with a shared training background decided that they wanted to produce their own work. “Forging your own path can be overwhelming, so we were seeking support from each other in becoming our own artists,” says Fly artist, Nicole Johnson. “We’re an artist-led platform. The desire to become a platform came from supporting each other’s works. We’re interested in building and developing our own work while actively supporting others with the resources we can share.”
They have been resident artists at the fully-equipped Windmill Arts Center in East Point since 2018, where they have extended the benefits of this space to hundreds of artists across Atlanta since then through residency programs, performance opportunities, and intensive workshops. Excuse the Art gives independent artists space in the studio, time in the process, and a stipend so they can focus on the creative play and effort that forms the core of any artwork. “We wanted to put more value on the creative process. That’s where the most amazing ideas are born,” says Jimmy Joyner.
This year's lineup is incredibly talented and diverse. Dance and theatre artists alike will grace the stage, including Indya Childs, who was named in Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch,” and Frankie Consent, a 2021 Hambidge Cross-Pollination Art Lab resident artist. Be sure to buy tickets for two nights in a row so you can catch the full cast! Tickets and more information are available on their website at FlyOnAWall.buzz/eta-tickets
