This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
When dancer Rachel Van Buskirk performed in Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre’s “Out of the Box” program in September 2023, she was visibly pregnant with her first child and gave a beautiful performance in the world premiere of Darian Kane’s “Adoption of Faith.” This year, “Out of the Box: Series II” will mark another life-changing event as she leaves the company she cofounded with four other former Atlanta Ballet dancers and relocates to Houston, where her husband is starting a tenure-track job at the University of Houston.
The move means leaving behind the city and community where, over the last 20 years, she has grown from a talented young ballerina into a formidable artist at the top of her game. Van Buskirk still vividly recalls the first time she saw Terminus Artistic Director John Welker, another original “Terminator” and co-founder, dance. She was a 15-year-old student in the Atlanta Ballet school, and he was in the company. “When I saw John in class, my jaw was on the floor. It was just incredible the crazy things he could do.”
She also remembers watching Terminus co-founder Tara Lee perform the lead role in Atlanta Ballet’s production of “Madame Butterfly.” “I stood in the wings with tears streaming down my face,” Van Buskirk said. “It was the most beautiful, soulful thing I’d ever seen.”
Credit: Photo by Christina Massad
Credit: Photo by Christina Massad
When she joined Atlanta Ballet and took on more challenging roles, she went from admiring her future Terminus colleagues from afar to counting Lee, John and Christine Welker, Heath Gill and Christian Clark among her most trusted artistic collaborators and friends.
Van Buskirk was 18 when she and Clark partnered for the first time. Over the years — and during countless performances of “The Nutcracker” as the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Cavalier — the two developed an almost intuitive sense for moving together in complex neoclassical and contemporary pas de deux.
At Terminus, they continued to hone this partnership in countless ways in multiple ballets. “Rachel is a singular force of artistry and passion,” Clark said recently. “Our longtime partnership on stage has been a major highlight of my career, and I will miss dancing with her dearly.”
To honor Van Buskirk’s contributions to Terminus, the school and the company, Lee is creating one last duet for them that will premiere on the “Out of the Box: Series II” program at Tula Arts Center. “Rachel has the ability to be wholly present and open in the studio, generously serving whatever creative process she’s involved in,” Lee told ArtsATL. “She has been an ideal muse and inspiration to me and every choreographer that has worked with Terminus.”
After Van Buskirk’s departure, Clark will be the only original Terminator still performing regularly with the company.
Van Buskirk’s temperament was well-suited to Atlanta Ballet under former artistic director John McFall, who led the company in a more contemporary direction, away from strictly classical and neoclassical ballet.
“I never thought of myself as just a ballet dancer,” Van Buskirk said. From a relatively young age, as a student under Li Yaming at Pacific DanceArts in Vancouver, Canada, where she grew up, Van Buskirk studied a variety of dance forms. She loved hip-hop, and her teachers included modern dance icons such as Tiffany Tregarthen, who toured extensively with Crystal Pite’s company Kidd Pivot.
McFall hired Lauri Stallings as resident choreographer at Atlanta Ballet soon after Van Buskirk joined the company. (Stallings later founded the movement platform glo.) “Lauri brought with her more contemporary ideas,” Van Buskirk recalled. “We had all of these nourishing things feeding us during that period. Every new technique felt to me like the most interesting way to move, and then we got very lucky and introduced Atlanta to [the movement technique] Gaga in [Ohad Naharin’s] ‘Minus 16.’”
Credit: Photo by Christina Massad
Credit: Photo by Christina Massad
As an artist, Van Buskirk said she feels a “hunger” that has pushed her to explore new styles and ultimately take on leadership roles in the studio, backstage and in the back office. “Whether it was dancing for myself or teaching and wanting something for a student, I always had this need for a little bit more,” she said.
Now living and working in Europe, McFall says he recognized that hunger when Van Buskirk was with Atlanta Ballet. “She has a vivid and acute imagination, a remarkable ability to dive into the essence of a role and stir the hearts and minds of an audience,” he said recently. “Musically, she finds the in-between parts that matter to her and creates intuitive nuances with her movement that are original and exclusive. She simply is an amazing artist.”
Particularly formative was Van Buskirk’s experience running the Atlanta Ballet school’s summer preprofessional program. In addition to teaching, the job entailed establishing a curriculum, recruiting instructors and curating a performance repertoire. “Helping those dancers reach their goals, seeing each person as an individual and sharing my knowledge with them, that really gave me the bug for being in charge.”
Consequently, even though she hadn’t planned to build her own company from the ground up, Van Buskirk eagerly joined her co-founders when they formed Terminus in 2017.
During seven years with Terminus, Van Buskirk found her groove as a dancer and choreographer. She watched her students, among them new company member Amalie Chase and 2023-24 protégé Johanna Wu, grow up through the Terminus Modern Ballet School and the Terminus protégé program.
She acquired new skills and expertise, launching her undergraduate education in business at Georgia State and managing public relations for the company. As artistic director of the company, Welker describes her as “uncompromising, always 100% in her work … generosity, humility and loyalty to match. Rachel embodies the ethos and spirit we all strive for.”
Van Buskirk said she will miss working closely with such good friends, as well as the ever-evolving variety of roles she played in a young, innovative arts organization, saying she loved the challenge of wearing so many different hats.
Reflecting on her time with Atlanta Ballet and Terminus, Van Buskirk describes the relationship between physical prowess and artistic range over the course of a dancer’s career. During the first phase, technical skill and artistry ideally evolve until, hopefully, at the peak of one’s stage career, artistic and physical virtuosity are equally matched. At some point, though, artistry and technique diverge. A dancer can continue to mature artistically, even as physical limitations develop with age.
Van Buskirk has yet to hit that tipping point. “I feel stronger than I have in a long time, physically and emotionally — all of it. The physical part surprised me because there’s only so much you can do at the end of a pregnancy to stay in shape,” she said. “But since [our daughter] Maren was born, I feel so much more in my body when I’m rehearsing and in front of the room teaching.”
Nonetheless, she has seen how Terminus as a company creates a space where both young phenoms and mature dancers can thrive. She noted how choreographers such as Darien Kane and Ana Maria Lucaciu are as interested in developing characters and exploring emotional range as they are in pushing the envelope when it comes to technique. As a result, they have found ways to showcase the individual strengths of particular dancers, whatever their ages.
Even when they aren’t performing, the veterans are doing the crucial work of bringing up the next generation of artists. “It’s a very exciting time for the company,” said Van Buskirk. “You continue a legacy through mentoring and knowledge sharing. We are the ones passing on our values and ways of moving, and the teacher inside of me gets very excited about that.”
Credit: Photo courtesy of Rachel Van Buskirk
Credit: Photo courtesy of Rachel Van Buskirk
In this next chapter of her life, Van Buskirk envisions completing her undergraduate degree and has her eye on the University of Houston’s masters in business administration degree program, focused on arts administration.
In the short term, though, she plans to take time off from performing, immerse herself in her new role as a mom and take open classes to familiarize herself with Houston’s dance scene.
“I’m not too stressed about it,” she said. “It’s weird because there is a part of me that feels anxiety that I don’t have a lot going on yet. I also know, though, that an opportunity like this — to take some time with our Maren, set up a new home, get to know my community — may not happen again.”
DANCE PREVIEW
“Out of the Box: Series II”
Sept. 14-22. 7 p.m. Sept. 14 and 21, 2 and 7 p.m. Sept. 15 and 22. $65 adults; $25 students; opening night red carpet event, $250. Tula Arts Center, 75 Bennett St. NW, Suite A-2, Atlanta. 404-446-0510, terminusmbt.com
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Robin Wharton studied dance at the School of American Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. As an undergraduate at Tulane University in New Orleans, she was a member of the Newcomb Dance Company. In addition to a Bachelor of Arts in English from Tulane, Robin holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in English, both from the University of Georgia.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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