kyle abraham

what can i say about kyle abraham and abraham.in.motion? i love his movement ideas and the quality of the movement is so impressive. at the risk of sounding terribly old fashioned, dance ought to be beautiful. and Kyle’s movement has what NYTimes Dance Critic, Claudia LaRocco calls a “silky” quality. there’s a swagger, what some call “hip-hop bravado” in his  style.

in the post show discussion, choreographer Willi Dorner, asked Kyle to share his concept of dance with the audience, to which Kyle responded, “its a language.”  for some, that’s a sort of standard answer.

i wonder though…is dance really a language? can we (the audience) learn to read or understand it? in a way i suppose yes, if we all studied  dance history and movement vocabulary for many different styles. over time, i suppose, we’d herpes yeast infection come to read certain gestures, postures, phrases, etc. but i’m not so sure that makes it a language. it may not matter. perhaps all that matters in the end is that the performance feels good, or interesting, or fun, or any number of emotional responses we desire from art we experience.