Abraham fuses history, hip-hop, and much more

> BY JANET SMITH

To understand the multilayered fusion that is Kyle Abraham’s dance, it helps to dig into the celebrated New York City choreographer’s roots.

Today, he’s one of America’s fastestrising talents, artistic director of his own Abraham.in.motion. He’s received national awards (a 2016 Doris Duke award, a 2013 Macarthur Fellowship, a 2012 Ford Fellowship, and a 2010 Princess Grace Award, to name a few), and created commissions for the likes of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

He’s a unique voice on the American stage, conjuring pieces that layer history, styles, and music from different eras. One of his best-known works, Pavement, reimagined the seminal flick Boyz n the Hood in his native Pittsburgh, circa 1991, interweaving street scenes from his hometown and the 1960s blues of Mississippi Fred Mcdowell. In Absent Matter, he took inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement, meshing jazz with hiphop samples and featuring large projections of riots and burials. Like so many of Abraham’s works, the piece managed to reflect on several sociopolitical pasts while looking to the future, melding the movement and music in the same way.

Abraham was raised in Pittsburgh’s historically black Hill District. He studied cello and classical piano, giving him a taste of the traditional arts. At the same time, he was growing up amid the hip-hop boom of the ’80s—but he emphasizes it was a different, more open kind of hiphop in those early days.

“At house parties and any and all social events, the records would come on and it would be a kind of unifying experience,” he says, reflecting on the fact that hip-hop has since become more “consumerized”. He’s talking to the Straight from Los Angeles, where he’s teaching at UCLA at the moment. “It’s been funny seeing how people are twisting it now as a dance style with a lot of attack—with a fake roughness to it. But back then it was a social-dance thing.”

Within the kind of hip-hop he grew up with, Abraham says he could find a range of emotion and nuance. But it wasn’t till he was in his teens that he saw another form that would take him further. “The first ‘ dancing’ I saw was the Joffrey Ballet, and they were doing a show to [the music of] Prince,” he says. “The only reason I went was because of Prince’s music. I had never seen ballet.

“That opened my eyes more to a lot of the possibilities of movement. So then I started asking if I could watch a friend’s dance class and it went from there.”

He never stopped moving after that, eventually making his way to a master’s at New York University’s acclaimed Tisch School of the Arts before launching his company. Now he’s known for his flowing mix of hip-hop, urban, and contemporary dance styles.

But where did his interest in identity and history start? It’s a complicated subject for Abraham, who prefers the term ownership to identity.

Abraham prefaces the discussion with this: “I’ve been interested in storytelling, about who I am and what I want to be,” he explains. “But it’s a curious thing that happens: because I’m talking about these things and because I’m a black man, or a black gay man, some of these things take on a political tone because of the colour of my skin or my sexual orientation. But some of these are a love letter to who I was when I was 13 or 14, and as you reflect you see the conflicts that resonate in today’s society. But a lot of my works are looking at a previous time.”

Really, he says, a lot of his themes stem from the love of history he’s had since he was a kid. “It was probably the only academic course that I enjoyed,” he says.

That passion will certainly be evident in one of the works coming here on his mixed program. The energized The Gettin’, from 2014, was created for the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation that ended slavery in the U.S., as well as the end of South Africa’s racist apartheid regime.

It’s a seamless pastiche, set to Robert Glasper’s interpretation of the 1960 jazz album and civil-rights declaration “We Insist!”, otherwise known as Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, while the costumes, and some of the social-dance references, refer to the 1950s. Signs from apartheidera South Africa, including one declaring “White Area”, fill the projections at the back of the stage.

“You think about the perceived changes in our cultures, but there’s so much more to be done,” he reflects. “It was a work that was referencing and honouring the hope for change, celebrating the hope for change from a previous time.”

Also on the bill is 2011’s Quiet Dance, a subtler quintet set to pianist Bill Evans’s sentimental rendition of the Leonard Bernstein classic “Some Other Time”.

And, giving audiences a full view of his trajectory, Abraham will also be debuting excerpts from his new work, Dearest Home.

The era-crossing, genre-fusing works you’ll see on display at Abraham’s Chutzpah Festival run should resonate strongly in these divided times— especially with what’s going on south of the border. OUT magazine once called Abraham one of the “best and brightest creative talents to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama”. But how does he situate his work now that that other guy is in charge of the White House?

“I don’t have that much to say about that man. I think we do a better job if we don’t mention his name, he’s so hungry for celebrity,” he says.

In the case of Abraham, movement and imagery speak louder than words.

Thegettin’