As recognized in this year’s ArtsATL 2025 Ones to Watch, during her first year with Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre Lenai Wilkerson has not only impressed with her versatility and artistry as a dancer – she has stepped into a leadership role. She is spearheading TMBT’s effort to revive Wabi Sabi, an annual outdoor performance series that ran as part of Atlanta Ballet’s programming from 2011 until 2016, and introduced the city to choreographers such as Jennifer Archibald and TMBT co-founders Tara Lee and Heath Gill. 

Now, after more than nine years on hiatus, Wabi Sabi, originally the brain child of TMBT’s artistic director John Welker, returns to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens as Wabi Sabi Terminus, October 30 through November 2. Titled ECHO, the re-launch bill will present new choreography from Wilkerson, fellow TMBT dancer Amalie Chase, and New York City-based dancer and choreographer Chris Bloom. 

Wabi Sabi Terminus will bring dance to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens this fall. (Photos by Katelyn Sager)

According to artistic and creative director Wilkerson, Wabi Sabi Terminus retains the spirit as well as the name of its predecessor, which references the traditional Japanese aesthetic that embraces impermanence and well-crafted simplicity, and celebrates how nature and time shape and transform material objects. At the same time, she said, its productions will speak to the concerns of the current moment and meet the needs of an evolved artistic context.

Wilkerson highlighted two major inspirations for Wabi Sabi‘s reboot. She believes Atlanta has a need for programming that connects ballet to the rest of the city’s diverse and cross-disciplinary arts scene while also engaging new audiences. In particular, she hopes that by bringing ballet to young professionals in a less formal outdoor setting and collaborating with artists who may already have caught their attention, Wabi Sabi will entice them into the theater as repeat patrons and sponsors of TMBT’s other offerings.

Wilkerson began conversations with Welker about the new venture in the moments between rehearsals and classes last season. At the time, she was completing a masters degree in arts leadership at George Washington University and, as she explored art installations and live shows around town, she noticed a lack of awareness among the patrons she met about Atlanta’s diverse offerings in contemporary concert dance, especially the unique blend of ballet and contemporary forms that is TMBT’s forté. She found herself thinking, “How can we get this audience excited about ballet, and get them coming back to the theater time and time again by showing them something they haven’t seen before in new spaces?”

For ECHO, which is free with Garden admission, Wilkerson decided to collaborate with Atlanta-based ensemble vim, a female-led chamber music collective dedicated to performing the works of living composers, especially those with strong ties to the southeastern U.S. The group will provide live accompaniment for the dances.

In addition to forging connections between ballet and the broader Atlanta arts community – like Welker did in programming the original Wabi Sabi performances – Wilkerson put together a bill that connects the work of Atlanta choreographers to what is happening in contemporary ballet elsewhere. Bloom, who created a premiere for ECHO, is currently a company member at Ballet Hispánico, and he and Wilkerson frequently shared the stage during her tenure with that company.  

Bloom said that, because of the trust they built working together as dancers, he was all in when Wilkerson approached him more than a year ago about her ideas for Wabi Sabi Terminus. This will be his first time showing work in Atlanta, but he has previously created site-specific work for dance on film and music video projects. For ECHO, he has crafted a duet with Wilkerson that is inspired by their own particular strengths as dancers and responds to ECHO‘s setting in the Gardens.

Like everything else at TMBT, Wabi Sabi Terminus is also an internal team effort. Chase, who joined TMBT as a protege in 2023 and was promoted to the company in 2024, has stepped up as social media and marketing director. Elizabeth Labovitz, a “terminator” since 2023, is the rehearsal and logistics director. Wilkerson, Chase, and Labovitz are all performing in ECHO as well.

“Terminus is always evolving and transitioning, and it’s very exciting that John is kind of passing the Wabi Sabi baton to another generation of leaders,” Chase told ArtsATL. She said her piece for ECHO addresses the theme of seasonal and evolutionary transition and comprises a pair of pas de deux.

Amalie Chase.

Lenai Wilkerson.

Elizabeth Labovitz.

Though audiences may be more familiar with Chase’s work as a dancer rather than as a choreographer, she explained that creating dances has always been as much a part of her artistic identity as performing in them. “During my time at Charlotte Ballet, I had an opportunity to choreograph for the trainees, and this past season, my work for the Terminus Modern Ballet School student company was selected for performance at Regional Dance America, which was a cool full circle moment because I grew up going to RDA.”   

Given that Wabi Sabi helped set Welker on his own path to becoming a co-founder and executive and artistic director of TMBT, his decision to hand Wabi Sabi Terminus to a new cohort is very much in keeping with the project’s original mission. The fact that Wabi Sabi Terminus is now in the hands of an all-female team, and launching with a program on which two of the three debut works are by young female choreographers who are also still in their prime performing years, shows how it is evolving along with dance as a field of artistic endeavor.

While the situation is improving, according to Dance Data Project‘s Global Leadership Report 2025, which summarizes data gathered in 2024 from 217 ballet companies around the globe, women continue to be significantly outnumbered by men in company leadership positions at nearly all levels. The DDP’s 2025 Global Resident Choreographers Report showed that women are steadily closing the gender gap but still represent a minority of choreographers-in-residence. This is in spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of people entering the field of dance identify as female.

As DDP’s founder and president Elizabeth Yntema has noted, early career leadership and choreographic opportunities — such as leading Wabi Sabi Terminus and creating new work as part of its programming — provide essential training for dancers hoping to climb the career ladder in ballet. With the launch of Wabi Sabi Terminus, TMBT may very well be helping to change what ballet looks like, both in the boardroom and on stage.

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