UCSB Arts & Lectures will present A.I.M by Kyle Abraham’s “An Untitled Love” featuring the Music of D’Angelo, 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 13 at Campbell Hall as part of the 2021-2022 Creating Hope programming initiative.
One of today’s most in-demand choreographers, A.I.M. artistic director Abraham mixes modern, contemporary, ballet and hip-hop dance.
The winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and a Doris Duke Artist Award, Abraham has been commissioned to create work for companies such as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and New York City Ballet.
His company of 11 dancers, Abraham.In.Motion (A.I.M), performs An Untitled Love, a thumping mixtape celebrating culture, family and community set to the music of R&B legend D’Angelo.
Abraham is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow who 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, an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from Washington Jefferson College, and is currently serving as a visiting professor in residence at UCLA.
He is a 2018 Princess Grace Statue Award Recipient, 2017-18 Joyce Creative Residency Artist, 2016 Doris Duke Award Recipient, and 2015 City Center Choreographer in Residence.
In November 2012, Abraham was named the New York Live Arts Resident Commissioned Artist for 2012-14. Just one month later, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premiered Abraham’s Another Night at New York City Center.
Abraham received a Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance for his work in The Radio Show, and a Princess Grace Award for Choreography in 2010. The previous year, he was selected as one of Dance Magazine’s “25 To Watch” for 2009, and received a Jerome Travel and Study Grant in 2008.
His choreography has been presented throughout the U.S. and abroad including Fall for Dance Festival at New York City Center, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Joyce Theater, The Los Angeles Music Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Théâtre de la Ville, Sadler’s Wells, and Maison de la Danse.
In addition to performing and developing new works for his company, A.I.M, Abraham premiered in 2016 Untitled America, a three-part commissioned work for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; toured “The Serpent and The Smoke,” a pas de deux for himself and Bessie Award-winning and former New York City Ballet Principal Dancer Wendy Whelan as part of Restless Creature.
He choreographed for the feature-length film “The Book of Henry” for director Colin Trevorrow, and recently premiered the Bessie-nominated “The Runaway” for New York City Ballet’s 2018 Fall Fashion Gala, which was recognized as Best of Dance for 2018 by The New York Times.
The mission of A.I.M, under Abraham, is to create an evocative interdisciplinary body of work. A.I.M is a representation of dancers from various disciplines and diverse personal backgrounds. Combined, these individualities create movement that is manipulated and molded into something fresh and unique.
Learn more at http://aimbykyleabraham.org/.
Tickets are $40, general public; $15 for UCSB students with current student ID. For tickets and more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures, 805-893-3535 or visit www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu.
Dance series sponsors are Margo Cohen-Feinberg & Bob Feinberg, Audrey & Timothy O. Fisher, Barbara Stupay, and Sheila Wald.