Pounding in Pavement
KYLE ABRAHAM’S mix of urban dance and contemporary ballet doesn’t gloss over the hard realities of racial tension and city life
When a young choreographer produces a masterwork, the dance world takes notice. American Kyle Abraham was 34 in 2012 when he staged the première of Pavement, a work that his company, Abraham.in.Motion, is bringing to Montreal next week under the Danse Danse umbrella.
In terms of its movement alone, Pavement, an innovative mix of urban dance and contemporary ballet, is irresistible. What’s remarkable is that its mixed vocabulary comes across like an organic whole, not like an amalgamation of unrelated styles arbitrarily stuck together. The accompanying music is even more diverse: Bach, Brel and Sam Cooke are only a few of the ingredients in the soup.
But Pavement goes beyond abstract dance. It’s a tale of young people struggling to link up amid the turbulence of the American urban jungle. Its social relevance is unmistakable, especially to youth.
With a basketball hoop as a backdrop and a video screen showing scenes of urban decay, one female and six male dancers, including Abraham, go through a series of encounters. Some lead to compassion or tenderness. Others turn to conflict and violence. At times racial differences between blacks and whites are accentuated, while at other times race is totally forgotten.
To its credit, Pavement does not gloss over hard reality — it has no easy happy ending. When gunshots are heard, they echo close to home. Even a brief scene with a fellow eating potato chips got a tweak of reality at the suggestion of Pavement’s dramaturge, Charlotte Brathwaite, a Canadian whom Abraham met in 2010.
“She wanted the dancer to bea bit messier with the chips. I think she really understood the gluttony and ignorance,” Abraham recalled in a recent telephone interview from Ottawa, where Abraham.in. Motion was at the National Arts Centre in The Radio Show, the work that garnered him a 2010 best-performance Bessie from New York’s dance community.
Pavement’s choreography is dazzlingly quick to adapt to the dancers’ emotional states. One moment, the dancers move with the grace and flowing lines associated with ballet — a treat for the eyes. Moments later, they can be strutting manfully, pushing each other or provoking a fight with a brutal frankness not usually seen in dance.
A highly symbolic recurring sequence has one fellow forcing another to lie face down on the floor with his hands behind his back. Whites and blacks get the same humiliating treatment, sometimes at the hands of their own race, which Abraham, an African-American, finds particularly appalling.
“I’m interested in certain visual things, in particular black-on-black crime, slavery and police brutality. White people do this to black people, but why do we do it to ourselves?”
Abraham’s concern for youth who are caught up in a harsh urban environment comes out of his own experience. He grew up in Pitts- burgh, and though his family lived on a secluded, quiet street, the surrounding area had its danger.
“The bus stop might have gang members or a lot of other crazy things going on,” he recalled.
The gang-themed 1991 movie Boyz N The Hood marked his consciousness at age 14. Pavement was largely inspired by the film.
Growing up, Abraham danced to rap and R&B music at clubs and parties.
“It was most definitely a natural way for me to move. I got sucked into rave culture. I love the music and the environment, that kind of openness. As dark as it is, people feel a little less inhibited about how they might be dancing or whether anyone might be looking.”
He did not see a ballet or contemporary dance show until he began formal dance studies at 17. That year, the eminent choreographer Bill T. Jones brought his dancers to Abraham’s high school.
“I was really drawn to his work. I had autographs from a lot of his company’s dancers.”
Within five years, he was dancing with those same dancers in Jones’s company in New York. It was the kind of baptism by fire that many young professional dancers face — how to fit into an established company.
“Just because you want to dance for a company doesn’t mean the dancers will love you. There’s always the thought, ‘Is this dancer going to take my job?’ Things unrelated to you affect how you work.”
Abraham stayed with the company only a short time, ultimately deciding to stop dancing altogether. For 18 months, his dancing career was on hold. But he bounced back to perform with various New York companies, including a long stint with David Dorfman Dance.
Having founded Abraham.in.Motion in 2006, Abraham drew attention and acclaim with The Radio Show, about the effects of dementia. (His father suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.)
In 2008, Abraham created an installation in Montreal for Ballet Divertimento’s wonderful Springboard summer dance session. He became friends with one of Springboard’s founders, Alexandra Wells of New York’s Juilliard School. Since then, Wells has offered her comments on all of Abraham’s creations, including Pavement.
“She really gave honest feedback — what was necessary or needed more work. She can give me performance notes where maybe someone else would be afraid for whatever reason. She really goes there with me and tells me what is and isn’t believable, where I can take more time and where I take too much time.”
Abraham has won a number of major support awards, including the Princess Grace Foundation Award and, last year, the prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship, which is worth $625,000 — an undreamed-of sum for a young dancer/choreographer.
This year, Abraham ends his term as resident artist at New York Live Arts, a Manhattan studio.
“I’m trying to figure out what’s next. I’m getting exciting offers.”
Abraham.in.Motion performs Pavement, Thursday to March 8 at 8 p.m. at Théâtre Maisonneuve of Place des Arts. Tickets cost $29 to $55.50. Call 514-842-2112 or visit pda.qc.ca. Dance notes: Kudos to the National Ballet of Ukraine for its splendid performances of La Bayadère at Place des Arts last week, at the very height of the political turmoil in Kyiv. Especially noteworthy was the disciplined corps de ballet in the ethereal Shades scene, the dance-sensitive conducting of Ukrainian maestro Mykola Dyadyura and the assured dancing of the title-role ballerinas, Olga Golytsia and especially Natalia Matsak, an artist of the highest order who earned roars of approval. Montreal was reminded that when done well, classical ballet still rocks.