Pauline Adamek
Get ready for a thrilling weekend of dance at The Wallis. The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is excited to welcome the acclaimed contemporary dance company A.I.M by Kyle Abraham for two dynamic performances—Friday, April 11 at 7:30 PM and Saturday, April 12 at 2:00 PM. Known for its deeply moving, genre-blending choreography rooted in Black and queer history and culture, A.I.M brings fresh, thought-provoking work to the stage under the bold and brilliant vision of Kyle Abraham. Tickets start at $53.90, purchase tickets here –https://TheWallis.org/ or call – 310.746.4000.
This powerful program features a lineup of incredible new pieces created by some of today’s most exciting choreographers. Princess Grace Award winners Andrea Miller and Rena Butler showcase brand-new works alongside pieces by Paul Singh and Abraham himself.
Miller’s piece, YEAR, was specially commissioned by Abraham for the company. It explores the idea of presence and identity in our hyper-digital world. Meanwhile, Butler’s Shell of A Shell of The Shell offers a raw, intimate dive into self-exploration and the weight of cultural expectations.
Paul Singh’s Just Your Two Wrists is set to a hauntingly beautiful score by composer David Lang and tells a powerful story of loss, resilience, and the human spirit. Rounding out the program is Abraham’s latest work, 2×4—his first collaboration with composer Shelley Washington. This fast-paced, fluid, and physically bold piece is accompanied by live music, adding another layer of energy and emotion.
Together, these works showcase everything A.I.M stands for—dance that tells stories, sparks thought, and creates connection. It’s a celebration of identity, resilience, and the power of movement, and it’s not to be missed.
Come feel the energy, witness the artistry, and be part of an unforgettable experience at The Wallis.
Program:
YEAR
Choreography. Andrea Miller In Collaboration With A.I.M
Music Fred Despierre
Lighting Design Dan Scully
Costume Design Orly Anan Studio
Scenic Design Andrea Miller in collaboration with Dan Scully
The currency of this generation, and of the future, lies in information, in data. When logic becomes our entry point into every space, the body loses its relevance, its experience, its feelings, its infinite differences from one person to the next. Being present in a digital, remote, or virtual capacity changes how we as humans put stock into body language, and the exchange of being in each other’s presence. New Miller turns up the volume on human presence, embodiment, feeling, uniqueness, identity, and our reliance on bodily expression. The 30-minute piece welcomes its dancers and audiences into a space of ritual, practice, and meditation, where we enter the sublime through an investigation into the stamina of the body.
Shell of A Shell of The Shell
Choreography Rena Butler
Music Composition Darryl J. Hoffman
Lighting Design Dan Scully
Costume Design Hogan Mclaughlin
Exploring and revisiting the varied process of decolonizing the self as a point of departure, Rena Butler’s reimagines and abstract the narrative of the monolithic, titular character ‘King Kong’. Throughout the work, Butler poses the question “How does an environment force the configuration of the individual?” Through the contained scope of momentous imagery and buoyant tension, Shell of A Shell of the Shell will dissect themes of self-excavation in restrictive spaces to open the mind’s eye of cultural differences and the challenges one may face in operating under, building, and dismantling perpetuated systems or habits.
Just Your Two Wrists
Choreography Paul Singh
MUSIC. just (after song of songs) composed by David Lang from the album, the little match girl passionperformed Trio Mediaeval By arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., o/b/o G. Ricordi & Co.. Bühnen- und Musikverlag GmbH. Publisher: Red Poppy, Ltd. (ASCAP)/ Universal Music Publishing Group Label: Cantaloupe Music, LLC
The music, just (after song of songs),composed by David Lang and performed by Trio Medieval, is constantly creating chasms of loss, as well as potential. In each pocket of silence, there’s an opportunity for the dancer to keep striving. But we never know what kind of movement will come pouring out of the body—the dancer has to change qualities as fast as life happens. Physically, the work keeps unraveling in a way that begs to be seen. The entire series of steps, when attempted in just the right order and just the right timing, reveals the picture of a hand waving in the distance leaving the begging impression of “wait for me”, or “remember me” or even “goodbye, for now.”
2×4
Choreography. Kyle Abraham in collaboration with A.I.M
Music Shelly Washington
Costume Design Reid & Harriet.
Lighting Designer Dan Scully
Centered around a charged experimental classical score by composer Shelley Washington for two baritone saxophone musicians, Kyle Abraham creates an energized new quartet entitled 2×4. At its core, 2×4 is a new dance work that uses geometrical playfulness to explore conversation, confrontation, stillness, and bustling movement phrasing.
Its choreographic score echoes and harmonizes with Washington’s dynamic composition through several fast-paced curvilinear weaving patterns and various contrasting angular shape-based sequences, further articulating the interplay between opposing vocabularies.
A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham mission statement.
A.I.M believes in:
• The power of dance as an art form and A.I.M’s distinctive, ardent voice within contemporary dance an artistic process informed by robust conversations with people from diverse perspectives
• The pursuit of excellence through ethical leadership and through accountability to each other, the field at large, and the audiences we serve supporting and nurturing dancers with living wages, health insurance, and career development operating with integrity throughout all aspects of the organization.
KYLE ABRAHAM (he/him)
Founder and Artistic Director
KYLE ABRAHAM has premiered his work to international audiences and acclaim since 2006. Abraham has been profiled in Document Journal, Vanity Fair, Ebony, Harper’s Bazaar, Kinfolk, O Magazine, Paper, Surface, Vogue & Vogue UK, W Magazine, among many other publications. He was recently nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production (2025 – An Untitled Love at Sadler’s Wells); the proud recipient of a National Dance Critics Award for Choreography (2024 – Are You in Your Feelings / Alvin Ailey Dance Theater); Dance Magazine Award (2022); Princess Grace Statue Award (2018); Doris Duke Award (2016) and The MacArthur Fellowship (2013). In addition to performing and developing new works for his company, Abraham has been commissioned by a wide variety of dance companies, including American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, The National Ballet of Cuba, New York City Ballet, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, and The Royal Ballet. In 2024, Abraham premiered three new works to much acclaim, the evening-length work, Cassette Vol. 1 in Hamburg, Germany; Mercurial Son for American Ballet Theatre in October and in December, “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful” at the Park Avenue Armory, which Jennifer Homans of The New Yorker called an “Extraordinary Dance Memoir.”
Abraham has led and curated several performance series including the Danspace Project (2024 / 50th anniversary season) and Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City (2023, 2022), among others. In 2020, Abraham was the first ever guest editor for Dance Magazine.
He serves as the Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Professor in Dance at The University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance (2021-). Abraham sits on the advisory board for Dance Magazine and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the inaugural Black Genius Brain Trust, and the inaugural cohort of the Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab, a partnership between the Prada Group, Theaster Gates Studio, Dorchester Industries, and Rebuild Foundation.
Instagram:
@kyle_abraham_original_recipe
A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Bram Goldsmith Theater
9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills 90210
Friday, April 11 at 7:30pm, Saturday, April 12 at 2pm
Price – Tickets start at $53.90
Online – https://TheWallis.org/
Phone – 310.746.4000
About The Wallis. The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (The Wallis) was lauded by Culture Vulture: “If you love expecting the unexpected in the performing arts, you have to love The Wallis.” Broadway legend Patti LuPone, who was The Wallis’ 2015/2016 Season Artistic Advisor, described the venue as “one of the best in the country, allowing for an unparalleled intimacy between [the artist] and the audience.”
