Kyle Abraham Shares the Stage

Year. Photo: Carrie Schneider

Kyle Abraham, one of the most admired and prolific contemporary dancemakers, took a bold step for his company, A.I.M’s, recent Joyce Theater run. Instead of presenting only works he created, he showcased three other choreographers in addition to creating a premiere. While other big-name choreographers have done so (foremost, Alvin Ailey), it’s certainly not standard practice when alive; most understandably want to use the precious stage time as a platform for their own work.

But Abraham has always done things a little differently, often with the larger community in mind. Post-show stage pleas have commonly focused on pleas to donate to Broadway Cares, which supports AIDS/HIV patient services. At the Joyce, he called out by names of all of A.I.M’s dancers, and all the artistic collaborators behind the scenes and sitting in the audience. His gratitude filled the house with genuine appreciation and affection.

He’s also full of choreographic surprises and experimentation, both dance-wise and structurally. His premiere, 2x4, from a broad perspective evoked early modern dance creators with its Big Art set and challenging music (I’m thinking Merce Cunningham). Devin B. Johnson’s immense artwork backdrop, in shades of magma, and the baritone sax score by Shelley Washington, played on stage by Guy Dellacave and Thomas Giles, who periodically stomped their feet and framed the quartet of dancers. Abraham’s unique style mixes catwalk sashays, ballet, gestures, and pedestrian behavior, as if he spliced video clips together from a random day. He’s in no danger of being pigeonholed, style-wise. This more formal work, with challenging music, contrasts strongly with recent works such as An Untitled Love for A.I.M, with its quasi-narrative sections set to D’Angelo, and major commissions for New York City Ballet.

Jamaal Bowman and Olivia Wang in Year. Photo: Carrie Schneider

It was performed third and not last, which might be considered the “prime” slot on a bill. Andrea Miller’s Year (2024) took that honor, perhaps in part due to the installation of a largish set of three white walls surrounding the stage, and a craggy sun-like disc. The eight dancers wore Orly Anan Studio’s vivid unitards painted with surreal motifs—facial features and geometrical shapes. Fred Despierre’s percussion score contributed to the tribal feel. Miller trained in Gaga, and while that often percolates beneath the movement, it’s accented with a bit of voguing. The movement is sensuous, powerful, and expressive, and A.I.M’s skilled dancers wring out every drop, clustering and exploding, unspooling solos. Varied duets included one in which the woman skimmed above the stage, supported by her partner as he spun and leveraged her weight.

Paul Singh’s Just Your Two Wrists (2019) is an absorbing solo, here danced by Amari Frazier with an alternating ferocity and tenderness. (David Lang’s haunting music evokes Pam Tanowitz’s later usage in her memorable 2023 Song of Songs.) The program led off with Shell of a Shell of the Shell (2024), choreographed by Rena Butler to music by Darryl J. Hoffman. Butler is skilled with dramatic stagecraft—silhouetted dancers moving elastically, six pinlit performers isolated yet proximate, shows of extreme emotion in spasmodic or reactive moves. Yet it all felt a bit familiar, other than Hogan McLaughlin’s coarse ecru pantaloon and halter top costumes.

Abraham’s 2x4 almost felt like the answer to the question: which one of these is not like the other? His readiness to take risks by using squawking and stamping sax players, and reset his movement vocabulary for this piece, show why he continues to be lauded and watched carefully. But showcasing three contemporaries, and acknowledging all of his collaborators, reveal an uncommon generosity that runs through his body of work.

Dance Then & Now—Ballet at the Stissing Center

Mónica Lima, Elena Zahlmann, Kristina Shaw, Diana Byer, and
Julian Donahue in Private Angels. Photo: Patrick Trettenero

April promises spring, but winter clung on over the weekend; Columbia County got about half a foot of snow on April 12. So going to Stissing Center in Pine Plains for a Sunday afternoon matinee of Dance Then & Now, a program curated by Diana Byer, presented the chance to gather in a welcoming, vibrant venue and take in a varied ballet program. The works ranged from a 1951 duet by Agnes de Mille, Another Autumn (from Paint Your Wagon), to four contemporary pieces including several premieres.

The hour-long program ranged from experimental modern ballet to musical theater to satire. The latter, by Julian Donahue, titled Private Angels, was a site-specific premiere performed primarily on the auditorium floor, and partly on-stage (we were seated along the perimeter and on the mezzanine). It featured Donahue as a posh ballet taskmaster, controlling and effete—prancing, posing, swinging scythe-like arms, shooting icy glares at us, and eliciting guffaws, notably from a few enthusiastic children in the audience whose giggles were infectious.

Four women (Elena Zahlman, Kristina Shaw, Mónica Lima, and Byer) descended from the space’s four corners, facing one another and performing courtly, contained steps. Each woman took turns being partnered by Donahue, each duet progressing with different dynamics. It built to Lima’s section, when Donahue handled her with vigor, bordering on violence. Occasional piano music by Handel, played by Matteo Mangialetti, accompanied this slightly long but entertaining suite.

The bill led off with the premiere of Calandrelle, choreographed by William Whitener with music by Olivier Messiaen, in which Kristina Shaw hit crisp geometric shapes, bounced, tilted, pet her tutu, and spun with a knee bent. These jottings felt playful even while grounded in ballet. An Agnes de Mille duet from Paint Your Wagon was danced by Zahlmann and Donahue, with Mangialetti playing Frederick Loewe’s music. Though brief, we saw de Mille’s knack for distilling a burgeoning romance into a few key moments—the chaste wooing, and ensuing blossoming into affection and a side-by-side partnership. 

Stephen Pier’s premiere of A Conversation with Keyboard featured Lima and Shaw in elegant short black dresses trading ballet phrases in a rhythmic ebb and flow, and checking in with Mangialetti, playing music by Domenico Cimarosa. Lima and Donahue partnered in Isle of Skye, by Amanda Treiber, with recorded music by Mondrian Villega. Appropriately clad in sky blue costumes, they stretched into elongated lines and tossed in phrases of celebratory social dancing that evoked Scottish reels, perhaps a nod to the title.

All of these dances fit snugly and efficiently into the brief run time, a pleasing sampling of modern ballet that demonstrates the form’s continuing relevance and artistry. The dance programming, selected by Catherine Tharin, is just one genre among many featured at Stissing Center, which mounts a surprisingly robust season in the quietly simmering town of Pine Plains.

Martha Graham Dance Company at 100—Strong Dancers, Dwindling Graham

Xin Ying in Letter to Nobody. Photo: Brian Pollock

Martha Graham Dance Company performed its annual New York run at the Joyce this year, part of the troupe’s 100th anniversary celebration. It was another step in its evolution, a balance of Graham and contemporary choreography. Program A offered just a short bit of Martha, Act 2 of Clytemnestra (1958), which has all the hallmarks of high Graham—fantastic sets by Isamu Noguchi, fabulous costumes by Graham and Helen McGehee, unharmonious music by Halim El-Dabh—but tilts toward kitsch in the absence of the larger context. As Artistic Director Janet Eilber had informed us in her by now habitual, concise, pre-show comments, Agamemnon’s Ghost (Jai Perez) wears high gold platform shoes to indicate he’s in the afterworld, but it still feels like drag. We do get a solid sampling of Graham in the womens’ dancing—the yearning diagonal stretches and twists with cupped hands—and in the final solo by Lloyd Knight, with his repeated, self-flagellating hinges to the shoulder.

 Xin Ying in Clytemnestra. Photo: Isabella Pagano

Baye & Asa choreographed the world premiere of Cortege, to music by Jack Grabow. Eight dancers are hidden beneath a tarp, which slides off them. We hear a voiceover, including, “In times of extreme violence…” The dancers hit vignettes, evoking postures and gestures of torture and incarceration. They cluster, spasming, moving in bursts, giving animalistic Gaga vibes. A woman melts to the floor. Some don burlap vests; are they members or exiles? The movement is hyper controlled and precise, disturbing in its relentless, underlying terror, and undeniably beautiful.

Graham appears on film in the premiere of Letter to Nobody, by Xin Ying, who co-choreographed it with Mimi Yin. Ying, solo, channels Martha in front of a film segment of Graham’s Letter to the World, projected on a giant screen. Shot at an angle from above, it includes segments of social dance, and feels lighthearted; Graham is heard in a voiceover. Ying dances elegantly in flowing and graceful phrases, at one point kicking, swirling, and spinning repeatedly in her circle skirt. The film cuts to Graham fixing her enormous signature bun in front of a vanity. As she turns toward the camera, her face morphs into Ying’s. The effect is chilling, a demonstration of what AI can bring to dance theater, and a reminder that Graham’s heirs must carry on her legacy while always increasing the distance to her.

Cortege. Photo: Isabella Pagano

The program ended with Hofesh Schechter’s crowd pleaser, Cave (2022). In murky light, to a pulsing beat, 14 dancers move subtly at first, like a sea anemone. The dynamic builds, the group peels apart, still beating in sync, throwing in some Irish step dancing for good measure. Golden light hits them from the side, and they continue a trance-like surrender to the beat. It ends in a highly-controlled frenzy, the dancers writhing and throbbing in ecstasy. 

It’s yet another manifestation of the versatile and technically limitless group of dancers that comprise the Martha Graham Company, and that Graham’s elemental technique serves as a foundation for nearly all genres of dance. (That said, Ohad Naharin's Gaga felt more present in Cortege and Cave than Graham style.) The company performed two other programs which both offered proportionately more Graham to other choreographers' work, so the program I saw was an outlier. Graham's mythology-based repertory can now read as melodramatic and campy, but the company must continue to present this canon, along with her formal work, to share its primacy and essence.