“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
Set to the music of the neo-soul, Grammy Award-winning R&B artist D’Angelo, An Untitled Love serves as Kyle Abraham’s creative exaltation of Black love and unity. He dedicates this feel-good work—its visceral hope, solace, and joy—to family, culture, and community strengthened over generations and lifetimes. Nearly three decades after first befriending Brown Sugar, D’Angelo’s debut album, Abraham choreographs to the music of a singular artist for the first time in a work of this scale. Personifying love in all forms, this work shines through devotion to detail in the music and through movement.
Choreographer Kyle Abraham, founder and artistic director of A.I.M, has been a MacArthur “genius” Fellow and a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award winner. Presenting work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, at Lincoln Center, BAM, Harlem Stage, and abroad, the Pittsburgh native is among today’s most in-demand dancemakers. The first Black choreographer commissioned by New York City Ballet in over a decade, he featured music by Jay-Z and Kanye West in that production, The Runaway. Following his “Best of Dance for 2018” recognition by The New York Times, he choreographed Ash, a solo work for American Ballet Theater Principal Dancer Misty Copeland in 2019. Abraham, greatly influenced by the late 1970s hip-hop culture he was born into, also incorporates an artistic upbringing of classical cello, piano, and visual arts into his work.
Music by D’Angelo and The Vanguard
Scenic and lighting design by Dan Scully
Costume design by Karen Young and Kyle Abraham
Visual art by Joe Buckingham
Commissioning support for An Untitled Love comes from BAM; American Dance Festival with support from the Doris Duke/SHS Foundations Award for New Works; August Wilson African American Cultural Center; Houston Society for Performing Arts; Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival; The Performing Arts Center at Purchase College, Director Seth Soloway; Seattle Theater Group; and White Bird, Portland, Oregon, made possible through White Bird’s 2020 Barney Choreographic Prize.