Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion
Part of Tandem Paris-New York
A black man and a white man meet on a basketball court. The white man lowers the black man’s body gently to the ground, wraps him in a tender headlock, and places his hands behind his back. This devastating gesture becomes the grounding refrain of dancer-choreographer Kyle Abraham’s Pavement, inspired by the 1991 hip-hop drama Boyz n the Hood, W.E.B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk, and the historically black neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. Against a diverse sonic backdrop—clips of the film’s dialogue mixed with the music of Handel and Sam Cooke—Abraham’s dancers bound and rebound with hip-hop attack and balletic flow, while handshakes become fistfights and pas de deux and bodies stack up against each other and the ground.
Harlem Stage was the lead commissioner of Pavement through its WaterWorks program. WaterWorks is supported by Time Warner, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Participants explore Kyle Abraham’s postmodern movement vocabulary, full of intricate gestures and fearless floor work. Company member Matthew Baker also teaches sections of repertory from Pavement.
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