In Atlanta Ballet’s Hypnagogia, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa set out to embody the receptive, liminal state between wakefulness and sleep. For the world-renowned choreographer, it is also a space of creative possibility.

 “I’m a huge fan of surrealism, and, when I create something, I am always in that state of half-dreaming and half-awake,” she said. “I see images, and then they become reality.”

To make her dreams come true in this project, Lopez Ochoa and her frequent collaborator designer Christoper Ash set the piece among the clouds. Lopez Ochoa’s continent-crossing work requires frequent travel, and she has spent many hours gazing out the window of an airplane, wondering at the illusion of pillowy solidity projected by the towering drifts of water and ice. Hypnagogia invites the audience into an alternate reality where one could jump from a plane, confident in a soft, safe landing.  

Lopez Ochoa has made a name for herself in the dance world with evening-length story ballets. For a work like Coco Chanel: Life of a Fashion Icon, or, more recently, her world-premiere of Carmen for Miami City Ballet, she might begin writing the script a year or more in advance of bringing dancers into the studio. For a shorter dance like Hypnagogia, things come together much more quickly. Nonetheless, Lopez Ochoa says she still begins with a set of parameters that define the world the dancers will inhabit and guide the movement she creates for them. 

Choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa leads Atlanta Ballet dancers through movements for Hypnagogia, which debuts on May 9. (Photo by Amber Times)

“Everything in this particular piece was guided by the question, ‘what is the energy of a cloud?”’ she said. “It’s wafting through the air. It is air. It’s a breath.”  

This is the third time Lopez Ochoa has worked with Atlanta Ballet and the second under current Artistic Director Gennadi Nedvigin. Unlike Coco Chanel, where she set steps originally created for dancers at the Hong Kong Ballet on the Atlanta Ballet cast, for Hypnagogia, she created the movement with the particular gifts and strengths of this company in mind.

She described the process this time around as “amazing” and much more collaborative. Lopez Ochoa joined the Atlanta Ballet dancers in the studio with just two weeks to create Hypnagogia. “I thought, ‘I’m never going to make it,’ but they learned so fast,” she said. “We finished in seven days!”

She used the additional time to polish the steps and get to know the dancers. Like other choreographers who have worked with the company in recent years, Lopez Ochoa expressed appreciation for their technical capabilities, praising their strength, speed and precision.

While the vocabularies she creates for her ballets make full use of the dancers’ extraordinary abilities, Lopez Ochoa says her art also draws on a shared and innately human ability to read meaning from gesture. Asked if she is ever frustrated by the limitations of dance as a medium, she replied, “Never. I tap into this body language that we all have. It’s something that we grow up learning, something that we may not even be aware of using every day to make sense of our interactions with each other.”

Atlanta Ballet announced that the 2025-26 season will include Lopez Ochoa’s acclaimed Frida along with two other evening-length story ballets. Artistic Director Nedvigin said that after John McFall stepped down, he knew he wanted to add Lopez Ochoa’s work to the company’s repertoire. “As a dancer, I never had the opportunity to perform in Annabelle’s work, but I saw that she had worked with Atlanta Ballet under John McFall.”

Consequently, he was actively looking to connect and collaborate with Lopez Ochoa when the opportunity to produce Coco Chanel jointly with Hong Kong Ballet and the Queensland Ballet came along in 2019 (The ballet’s completion and premiere were delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic). 

He and Lopez Ochoa enjoyed working together on that production, and Nedvigin was impressed by her rapport with the dancers, so he invited her to create a shorter work this season. At Lopez Ochoa’s invitation, he traveled to see Ballet Arizona stage Frida in February. 

“The way Annabelle lays out the story of Kahlo’s life, what she went through, I found it very moving and wanted to share that with the Atlanta audience,” said Nedvigin.

Hypnagogia will close Atlanta Ballet’s final program of the 2024-25 season, appearing with Liam Scarlett’s Catch set to music by Phillip Glass and Alexander Ekman’s Tuplet set to an original score by Mikael Karlsson. 

Atlanta Ballet dancers Keaton Leier and Ashley Wegmann perform Liam Scarlett’s Catch. (Photo by Kim Kenney)

Jackie Nash appears in Alexander Ekman’s Tuplet. (Photo by Kim Kenney)

“All three of these ballets are so special,” said Nedvigin. “Together, they showcase the exciting potential of the company, not just for the coming season, but for several years to come.”

Nedvigin said that Ekman will be in town for the performance as he is interested to see what Tuplet looks like with an Atlanta Ballet cast. “Tuplet has this thread of humor running through it that culminates in one of my favorite moments in the ballet,” said Nedvigin. “It’s wonderful the way Ekman plays with rhythm and musicality.” Meanwhile, Scarlett created Catch for Atlanta Ballet, and Nedvigin described it as one of the company’s signature works. 

With regard to Hypnagogia, Nedvigin said the audience can expect a spectacular, visually striking ballet that draws the audience deeply into the world Lopez Ochoa has created. “I hope the piece transports the audience into that realm of dreams where it becomes possible to fly,” said Lopez Ochoa, “That they are able to feel that sensation of weightlessness as they watch the dancers on stage.”

Catch Tuplet will run Friday through Sunday, May 9 through May 11, at the Cobb Energy Center

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