Atlanta Ballet kicks up the mix with Fusion

• Charlie McCullers
• Pedro Gamino and Peng Yu-Chen in Helen Pickett’s “Petal”

The Atlanta Ballet obviously takes the term “mixed program” very seriously. When an evening encompasses traditional African music, Bach, a ritualistic sacrifice and some gorgeous minimalism, it’s safe to say that the term “mixed” definitely applies.

But it’s a measure of the Atlanta Ballet’s strength as a company that the dancers can incorporate many different ideas, styles, images and tones into a single evening that feels balanced, lively and engaging. It’s a program that long-time ballet fans will adore, but it’s also great entertainment for those who think they normally don’t like ballet. Through drama, joy, tragedy, narrative and abstraction, Fusion shows what a broadly adaptable and accessible art form ballet can be.

“The Rite of Spring” is the name of the second piece on the program, but it might just as easily cover the first. The evening opens with choreographer Helen Pickett’s “Petal,” a gorgeous, minimalistic dance for the company in front of a spare but brightly lit and changing backdrop based on the colors of a garden in bloom. Picket doesn’t just have a great eye for lovely, lyrical movement, but she also possesses a natural ease with subtle shades of emotion: There’s no specific narrative for “Petal,” but there is a sense of a steady, skillful unraveling of information and images as with a story. Against larger patterns of movement, Picket reveals little pockets of activity and drama. It’s a piece in which the joy and sensuality of spring are everywhere, but there are also tinges of sadness, too. Beneath the prettiness, there’s a haunted and troubled quality—even an unpredictability—to some of the movements, as when the women go limp in the men’s arms or a single male dancer remains seated in the foreground at stage left as a rich interweaving of pairs and groups continues on the stage behind him.