ImmerseATL offers mentorship, rigorous training and networking to emerging contemporary dancers. (Photo by Synapse Photography)
The Windmill Arts Center’s black box was nearly dark. One or two dim stationary spotlights barely and imperfectly illuminated fragments of the stage. Into the murky silence, a performer called, “Where are we going?” Another cried out, “Hello, is anybody there?”
The multi-textured minimalism of Orchestral Drone C by the Paris Opera House Orchestra expanded to fill the theater. ImmerseATL Artist Program participant Jazmyn Wright entered from downstage left, fumbled with a handheld spotlight and — turning it on herself, squinting into its bright glare and smiling gamely — began, “Hello, I’m Jazmyn Wright, and I’m here to audition for America’s Got Talent. I can sing. I can dance. What do you want me to do? I can do it all!”
Behind her, Georgia Rood, another of the 2025 ImmerseATL cohort, led a line of fellows slowly across the stage. As they groped through the gloom, one of the dancers called out again, “Where are we going?”
This performance titled Iris is an ImmerseATL Artist Program showcase choreographed by director Sarah Hillmer and her co-educators, Anna Bracewell and George Staib, in collaboration with the dancers. The June 26 showing was a capstone for the seven participants following a seven-week intensive designed to acclimate them to the unique opportunities and challenges of Atlanta’s contemporary dance scene. It also marked a return of the program after Hillmer took an approximately 18-month hiatus to reimagine how best to support emerging professional dancers, many who are on or just beyond the cusp of college graduation and hoping to build a career here in the city.
Hillmer founded ImmerseATL in 2017, in part, to expand participants’ horizon of expectations beyond a conventional understanding of success. In the dance world, that usually means joining an established professional company, frequently right out of high school, and then working one’s way through the ranks to become a teacher or maybe, and very infrequently (especially for women), a choreographer or company director. “The people making change in the world are many times not those who follow a cookie cutter pathway, and the same is true for dance,” said Hillmer, who has herself mapped a unique path to success in the industry.
Angela Harris, director of Dance Canvas, observed through Dance Canvas’ DC Next education program that emerging artists who complete their training in Atlanta often move across the country to New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. They may find places on Broadway or in companies such as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company or Hubbard Street. In Atlanta, however, professional contemporary dancers more often than not must piece together a living from some combination of part-time employment with a local dance company, teaching or administration, project-length gigs and festivals, and part- or even full-time work in another industry or field.
In 2023, Georgia tied with Wisconsin for last in statewide funding for the arts, spending just 14 cents per capita, compared to surrounding states like North Carolina with 84 cents, Alabama at $1.28, Tennessee at $1.47, South Carolina with $2.16 and Florida at $2.71. Only a fraction of the state’s arts budget goes to funding dance, with ballet taking the lion’s share.
Those contemporary dancers who choose to stay in Atlanta after completing their training or college are therefore frequently looking for something more than the predictability of steady work, even if they don’t know yet what other options might be available. They also face challenges connecting with professional opportunities in both contemporary concert dance and the blossoming commercial dance industry in a community where collaboration, mutual aid and DIY-grit transform scarce resources into high-caliber art.
Hillmer said ImmerseATL’s mission has always been and still remains centered on helping young professional dancers make those connections and explore the many varied pathways to success that the Atlanta contemporary dance world offers, particularly for those willing to take the path less traveled. The main shift Hillmer decided to make was condensing what used to be an eight-month journey during the regular August-through-June season into seven weeks during the summer.
“In 2017, eight months felt right,” said Hillmer. “But as the program matured, I realized how quickly peoples’ lives change as they’re just graduating college. Today’s young adults have also been through the Covid shutdown, and they’re starting their careers at a time of huge financial uncertainty,” she continued. So she retooled the program into an intensive, an experience that would be “just as impactful,” and offer the same level of rigor, but would be a shorter-term commitment — an intervention delivered at a pivotal moment of downtime to give the artists a much-needed jump-start.
In addition to Wright and Rood, the cohort participating in this iteration of ImmerseATL’s Artist Program included KSU graduates Autumn and Skie Justice, KSU rising senior Amber Solana, and Brenau rising seniors Grace Darden and Zoe Otto. Wright also graduated from KSU, and Rood left the University of North Carolina School of the Arts just a few credits shy of a performance-focused degree in dance in order to transfer to the University of North Carolina – Greensborough where she will be a senior completing a degree in choreography and movement analysis.
Speaking with these seven individuals allowed a picture to emerge of a talented, dedicated group with varied artistic and academic interests. All of them have taken a “yes, and” approach to their dance training and their education. Each of them, in their own way, reflected on how the ImmerseATL program has helped them find autonomy and reframe a career in dance as making a series of choices for oneself rather than jumping through hoops at the direction of others.
This fall, for example, the Justice twins are heading to Chattanooga to pursue their associate’s degrees in radiology, and Solana and Darden are double-majoring in dance and marketing. For them, a company contract would mean putting other educational and career goals on hold while pursuing a career in dance. ImmerseATL helped them to see how they might carve a middle way in Atlanta or elsewhere, continuing to develop their artistry while making progress in other fields.
“It was so validating to hear from, Andie [Knudson] and Patsy [Collins, two of the ImmerseATL ‘guides’ Hillmer hired to work with the cohort artists], that it’s okay to do something else,” said Skie Justice. “If anything, it’s encouraged. It doesn’t make you any less of a professional or a dancer to want ordinary job security while you’re pursuing your art.”
Wright would like to make her way to Los Angeles or New York, but wants to keep her options open in both concert and commercial dance. Rood is “counting the days” and planning a return to Atlanta in order to embark on a career as a choreographer. Rood, who grew up studying primarily ballet, described the ImmerseATL experience as both a “homecoming” and a “reprogramming,” adding, “I learned to let go of the self-judgment and expectations that other people placed on me so that I could exist in a space of curiosity and learning, where I could invest in myself and my work.”
In Iris the dancers embodied their ImmerseATL journey. After increasingly frantic repetitions of her self-introduction — for America’s Got Talent, for the role of a scientist in a TV pilot, for a place as a dancer in a Beyoncé show — Wright eventually turned the spotlight on her fellow dancers and then — after joining the ensemble to demonstrate on her terms her technical versatility as a dancer — the audience. Gaining confidence, Rood led others into the light and, with a fluidly-articulated movement vocabulary that was both innovative and seemed uniquely Rood’s own, initiated a sequence of solos. Throughout, Iris featured technical skill and moments of promising artistry from the entire ensemble.
While Atlanta audiences may have to wait a year or two to see members of the 2025 cohort on stage, several ImmerseATL Artist Program alums are still working in the city and will be performing in or creating new work in the coming months.
Raianna Brown, founder and director of Komansé Dance Theater, recently debuted a new work, Nina, and the company frequently performs in Atlanta. Knudson, who also works as a videographer for local performing arts organizations such as the Atlanta Opera, will join Emory’s resident professional company staibdance in the premiere of Staib’s between dog and wolf in October, and alternate endings, a new work by another ImmerseATL alum, Jacqui Hinkson, for her company EXCAVATE BODY, premiering in December. Collins, who is also a marketing and PR consultant providing services to Atlanta-area artists and nonprofits, heads back to the studio this fall to work on the choreographic process of a new piece to premiere in the winter or early spring.
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