Kyle Abraham’s Groundbreaking Dance Company

Abraham.In.Motion, brings a fresh, unique vision to the stage with When the Wolves Came In.

Abraham.In.Motion was just named one of The Boston Globe’s Top 10 Dance Picks in the nation (2014), won the prestigious Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award in 2012, and has been cited as “25 to Watch” by Dance magazine and one of New York’s “Best and brightest creative talents” by OUT magazine.

Timely and relevant to the current national spotlight on race and equality, Abraham.In.Motion’s When the Wolves Came In takes its inspiration from jazz legend Max Roach’s iconic 1960 protest album, We Insist: Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite. This album, originally intended to be released in 1963 to mark the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, was released in the fall of 1960 due to the severity sparked by the sit-ins in Greensboro, NC, and the urgency of the growing civil rights movement in the U.S. and South Africa.

Kyle Abraham began working on When the Wolves Came In after a visit to the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, South Africa. While there, he became fixated on the power of perception, and the ways that the 13-year-old Pieterson’s death in a 1976 anti-Apartheid protest shines a spotlight on questions of personal choice and collective rights in the struggle for freedom today.

“I keep going back to Roach’s response when asked about the song, ‘Freedom Day,’” says Abraham. “[Roach said] ‘Freedom itself was so hard to grasp…we don’t really understand what it really is to be free.’

Kyle Abraham’s dance company, Abraham.In.Motion (A.I.M.), was born into hip-hop culture in the late 1970s and grounded in Abraham’s artistic upbringing in classical cello, piano, and the visual arts. The company’s works strive to delve into identity in relation to a personal history, with a strong emphasis on sound, human behavior and all things visual, in an effort to create an avenue for personal investigation and exposing that on stage.

A.I.M. is a representation of dancers from various disciplines and diverse personal backgrounds. Combined together, these individualities create movement that is manipulated and molded into something fresh and unique.

A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Kyle Abraham began his dance training at the Civic Light Opera Academy and the Creative and Performing Arts High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He continued his dance studies in New York, receiving a BFA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

In November 2012, Abraham was named the newly appointed New York Live Arts Resident Commissioned Artist for 2012–2014. Just one month later, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premiered Abraham’s newest work, Another Night, at New York’s City Center to rave reviews.

For more information about the artist, please visit abrahaminmotion.org

If You Go: Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion, Tuesday & Wednesday March 24 & 25, 2015 at 8 p.m. at Diana Wortham Theatre. Ticket Prices:  Regular: $40; Student: $35; Child $20; Student Rush day-of show (with valid I.D.) $10. For more information, or to purchase tickets, call the box office (828) 257-4530, or visit www.dwtheatre.com.