Dance to the Radio
During a week that sees several of the dance worlds most established and veteran figures open their New York seasons, one of the most intriguing newer artists on the scene is offering his first full evening of work in the City. Kyle Abraham has made a riveting impression with his sinuous-yet-funky, elegantly articulated dancing whenever he has turned up. But with Radio Show, he is taking a major step, offering a work for seven dancers (himself included) filled with juicy, varied movement and propelled by thoughtful, evocative inquiry.
A Pittsburgh native, Abraham is referencing his hometown in this piece, specifically, its popular radio station WAMO that was taken off the air last September. He grew up listening to the stations mix of soul and R&B, always turned it whenever he arrived back for a visit and still speaks of it in the present tense, like a relative whose loss has not yet fully registered. It is the only urban voice on the radio there, he said at St. Marks Church after his company, Abraham.In.Motion, had run through the piece, which is in two halves, AM and FM.
When WAMO went off the air, I started thinking about what radio is to a community, especially an urban community, where a lot of people arent going to counseling. People calling in, voicing their opinion in a way that, to me, is a connection to therapy or counseling. To not have that, what does that do to a community?
Also feeding into the ideas he is exploring was a more personal experience: watching his father cope with Alzheimers disease and lose his ability to communicate through speech. The parallel for me is the loss of the voice. Theres the loss of a voice in an urban community, and now my fathers inability to say how he feels about a certain situation. I am looking at these things I layers. I wanted to keep I mind that I did not want to make a downer piece, because its a heavy subject. The mix of classic soul and hip-hop tracks he has assembled (with a score by Alva Noto woven in) certainly should mitigate against that worry.
Abraham studied the cello before discovering dance during high school, getting hooked enough to go for his BFA at SUNY Purchase and his MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. But while his dancing has long attracted notice and high praise, he was always focused on making dances as well as performing. The only reason I chose to go to college for dance, and to go to a performing arts school, was to have more tools to make dance, he said. He currently performs with David Dorfman Dance, and did a brief stint with Bill T. Jones after college. He mentions having stopped dancing for a year and a half after that, but stops short of saying there was a connection.
But hes certainly dancing now. As he went through his opening solo, one could sense occasional allusions to street dancingin its suppleness and spontaneitybut also the intelligence and control with which he performs. As his dancers joined in, often for solos or (sometimes overlapping) duets, there were introspective and disturbing momentsthe discomfiture of a body once so in control, losing some of that and finding itself at the mercy of what Abraham called disconnected synapses Abraham mentioned when talking about his father.
Its a subject that takes certainly him into emotional territory, but then he brightens when he mentions a change in his father, whom he doesnt recall having danced much before. Any time a song comes on, he gets up and will not stop dancing. Its amazing. Were at the home sometime, and they have a DJ, and he wont sit down!
Then thinking about that, from a dance perspective, that muscle memorywhat is the connection between that and getting into a more visceral place?
Joining his appetite for invigorating, captivating movement with a search for uneasy answers to uncomfortable questions, Abraham is certainly operating on all frequencies in what promises to be a most intriguing new work.
>Radio Show
Feb. 25-27, [Danspace Project at St. Marks Church], 131 E. 10th St. (at 2nd Ave.), 866-811-4111; 8, $12 and up.