FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 17, 2015
CONTACT:
Rebecca Bailey, Publicity Coordinator/Writer
Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
603.646.3991
“Genius” choreographer explores the incomplete quest for civil rights
Photos (L-R): Still images from When The Wolves Came In, Hallowed and The Getting. Photos by Ian Douglas. Photo of Kyle Abraham courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation.
HANOVER, NH—MacArthur “genius” choreographer Kyle Abraham, whose “smart….self-aware and luscious” (The New York Times) dance vocabulary fuses classical and modern styles, comes to the Hop with an evening-length work addressing the incomplete struggle for civil rights in South Africa and here at home.
His company, Abraham.In.Motion, performs When the Wolves Came In on Tuesday, March 31, and Wednesday, April 1, at 7 pm in The Moore Theater of the Hopkins Center. The work comes to the Hop soon after being a featured part of Alabama’s 50th-anniversary commemoration of the March on Selma. Abraham’s work was first seen at the Hop in Another Night (2012) in January 2013, which the Hop commissioned for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
While at Dartmouth, Abraham also will give an intermediate-level dance master class, on Wednesday, April 1, at 4:30 pm in the Straus Studio of the Berry Sports Complex.
Marking 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation and 20 since the end of South African apartheid, Wolves “takes on nothing less than civil rights, and it’s one of the most provocative…and engrossing dance programs to hit Boston in some time,” wrote The Boston Globe. “It’s also spectacularly performed by the company’s eight dancers.”
Wolves draws on Abraham’s captivating blend of modern dance, street dance, social dances, Brazilian capoeira and other diverse modes of movement. Wrote the Boston arts blog ArtsFuse, Abraham draws on a movement vocabulary “that developed out of his personal way of moving, including the gyroscope turns, arabesques pulling the dancers backward in space, and hip hop details poking through lucid streams of contemporary modern dance technique.”
The three parts are variously set to contrasting music. The first, also titled When the Wolves Came In, is set to a Los Angeles Chorale recording of Kyrie by rising young Vermont-born composer Nico Muhly. The second, Hallowed, is set to African-American spirituals. The third, The Gettin’, is performed to a score composed and recorded by Grammy-winning jazz pianist Robert Glasper, inspired by jazz drummer Max Roach’s seminal We Insist!: Freedom Now Suite of 1960. The set was designed by Glenn Ligon, an American conceptual artist whose work explores race, language, desire, sexuality, and identity, and in 2011 was given a mid-career retrospective by the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The seeds for Wolves were sown in 2012 when Abraham travelled to pay his respects to the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, South Africa, named in memory of a 13-year old boy martyred in an anti-apartheid protest in 1976. The choreographer had been listening to We Insist! This juxtaposition became a jumping-off point for a program that Abraham notes “was created to live in a skin well aware of the cyclical hardships of our history.” He created the work during a two-year stint as Resident Commissioned Artist under New York Live Arts.
Known for probing the relationship between identity and personal history through a unique hybrid of traditional and vernacular dance styles that speaks to a new generation of audiences, Abraham, 37, was raised in Pittsburgh, where he studied as a youth at the Civic Light Opera Academy and the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School—where he first saw the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (with which he later would perform), an especially inspiring event. He went on to study dance at SUNY Purchase and to obtain an MFA from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. He established Abraham.In.Motion in 2006, and his star steadily rose. In 2008 he was awarded a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant; in 2009, he was listed in Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch”; in 2010, he received a “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance for his work in The Radio Show and a Princess Grace Award for choreography; in 2012, he was given the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award; and his MacArthur Fellowship was granted in 2013.
Heralded by OUT magazine as one of the “best and brightest creative talents to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama,” Abraham has presented work with Abraham.In.Motion throughout the United States and abroad. Vogue praised his “avant-garde aesthetic, an original and politically minded downtown sensibility that doesn’t distinguish between genres.” Wrote The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Kyle Abraham just may be the defining choreographic voice of a new generation. He makes dance that has swagger, something that can escalate into anger and violence. It depicts a generation that is alienated not only by social pressures, but by virtue of technology. But this is also a generation that still needs to touch, to caress, to connect.”
RELEVANT LINKS
https://hop.dartmouth.edu/Online/kyle_abraham
http://abrahaminmotion.org/#when-the-wolves-came-in/top
http://nicomuhly.com/
http://www.robertglasper.com/
http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/glenn-ligon
Download high-resolution photos:
https://hop.dartmouth.edu/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=A14ACB33-679C-469F-9E07-5A08469894E7&sessionlanguage=&SessionSecurity::linkName=
CALENDAR LISTINGS:
Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion: When The Wolves Came In
MacArthur “genius” choreographer Abraham, whose Another Night (2012) the Hop commissioned for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, returns with a new work marking 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation and 20 since the end of South African apartheid. Set to spirituals and scores by Nico Muhly and Robert Glasper, Wolves features Abraham’s “smart….self-aware and luscious” (The New York Times) dance vocabulary fusing classical and modern styles.
Tuesday, March 31, and Wednesday, April 1, 7 pm
The Moore Theater, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover NH
$25/35/40, Dartmouth students $10, 18 and under $17/19
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422
Intermediate Dance Master Class with Kyle Abraham
Join Abraham for an invigorating and personalized, postmodern movement class, including core body strengthening, articulation of the spine, intricate gestures, and fearless floor work. Ages 14 and up.
Wed, April 1, 4:30-6 pm
Straus Studio, Berry Sports Complex, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH
$10
Information and registration: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422.
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Founded in 1962, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is a multi-disciplinary academic, visual and performing arts center dedicated to uncovering insights, igniting passions, and nurturing talents to help Dartmouth and the surrounding Upper Valley community engage imaginatively and contribute creatively to our world. Each year the Hop presents more than 300 live events and films by visiting artists as well as Dartmouth students and the Dartmouth community, and reaches more than 22,000 Upper Valley residents and students with outreach and arts education programs. After a celebratory 50th-anniversary season in 2012-13, the Hop enters its second half-century with renewed passion for mentoring young artists, supporting the development of new work, and providing a laboratory for participation and experimentation in the arts.