Kyle Abraham ’00 Brings New Work to the Park Avenue Armory
For the first time in nine years, he’s part of the ensemble when A.I.M. premieres the evening-length production “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful” on Dec 3, 2024.
“What Abraham brings … is an avant-garde aesthetic, an original and politically minded downtown sensibility that doesn’t distinguish between genres but freely draws on a vocabulary that is as much Merce and Martha as it is Eadweard Muybridge and Michael Jackson.” —Vogue
For this new A.I.M. production, Kyle Abraham brings together a cast of 17 dancers, the new media artist Cao Yuxi (also known as JAMES) for visual design on a custom-built stage, and the chamber ensemble yMusic to play the original score live for an audience of 800 in the massive 55,000-square-foot Park Avenue Armory space.
“Throughout his career, he has struggled with stage fright, he said, especially when dancing in groups. (He is more at ease in solos.) But for “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful,” … that deals with themes of aging, change and vulnerability, he knew he needed to be present onstage.”
“‘I talk to the dancers about my fears of making a work that’s so connected to how I’m feeling, because to stay in that vulnerable place is really exhausting.’ He sees the title as an expansive prayer: to make himself a better person, to make the world less cruel.”
Read more from “Kyle Abraham Is Fully in His Feelings About Now” in the New York Times.
Purchase alumni appearing in the production include Tamisha Guy ’13, Faith Joy Mondesire ’20, Jai Perez ’23, and Keturah Stephen ’22.
