In rehearsals, the choreographer Kyle Abraham is usually at the front of the room, directing and shaping his work. But on a recent afternoon at the Park Avenue Armory, he came running into the studio with childlike abandon — the opening of his latest dance.
As he circled the space, his hopeful run slowed to a plodding jog; then he regained momentum, adding in stutters, little leaps, quick shifts of direction. Finally, his pace slackened again, and he exited with a stooped, weary walk, as more dancers breezed in. In just a few minutes, he had danced the span of a life.
It’s been nine years since Abraham, 47, last made an ensemble work in which he also performed. Throughout his career, he has struggled with stage fright, he said, especially when dancing in groups. (He is more at ease in solos.) But for “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful,” a new large-scale, evening-length production that deals with themes of aging, change and vulnerability, he knew he needed to be present onstage.
“It would have felt like a cop-out not to put myself in it,” he said in an interview at the Armory, where the work will have its premiere on Dec. 3. “If I’m scared of failure, ugliness, change, not having the facility I had 20 years ago, all of that should be in the work.”
ImageFaith Mondesire, left, and Catherine Kirk, rehearsing “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful”Credit...Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York TimesImageJai Perez, left, and Keturah Stephens.Credit...Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York TimesIn the dances he has made for his company, A.I.M, over the past 15 years, Abraham has often been inspired by sources with a personal resonance, reflective of his experiences as a queer Black man from Pittsburgh. In “The Radio Show” (2010), he traced a thread between the closure of a beloved hometown radio station and his father’s struggle with aphasia. In “An Untitled Love” (2022), he paid homage to the neo-soul music of D’Angelo and the social gatherings of his childhood.
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