Review: Kyle Abraham's 20 Years of Urgency at Lincoln Center Rose Theatre

Art has long been a way to wrestle with the contradictions of human existence. The ugly — injustice, violence, discrimination — and the tender — love, strife, loneliness — often surface most potently on stage. Yet in a world worn down by repeated tragedies, it can feel tempting to imagine art not as a mirror but as an escape hatch, a portal to somewhere lighter, prettier, untouched.

Kyle Abraham is not interested in escape. His latest program, running September 25-27th at the Lincoln Center Rose Theater features three works — 2x4, If We Were a Love Song and The Gettin’ — that form a dynamic examination of strife and support. Performed with live musicians alongside the dancers, the company’s 20th-anniversary program underscores Abraham’s gifts as a collaborator and as a translator of shared experience through movement.

2x4 opens the evening with a jolt: a lone saxophonist (Thomas Giles) erupts into sound so forceful it seems to push the air itself to the margins. As dancers streak across the stage — a blur of color, precision and attitude — the piece becomes a paradise of overstimulation. Abraham’s signature style shines: contemporary forms rooted in classical technique but freed from rigid definition. The dancers’ greatest feat is not only their technical command but their ability to ground the choreography, embodying each phrase so fully that even the flashiest sequences feel lived in. When a second saxophonist (Guy Dellclave) joins, the energy combusts; dissonance collides with rhythm, and the piece hurtles toward its close without ever sagging.

Told in haunting movements, If We Were a Love Song, which premiered in 2021, may be one of the most beautiful works on stage right now. Set to a series of Nina Simone songs performed live by the dusky-voiced Baby Rose with piano accompaniment, it highlights Abraham’s gift for atmosphere. Here, longing and pride seep through held notes and suspended gestures. The choreography, understated yet incisive, captures emotion as something physical: a bent spine, a held breath, a body leaning into silence. The work is at times dimly lit, which mutes the spectacle, but its quietness is also its strength. Even acrobatic flourishes never break its spell. 

Joy radiates in both earlier pieces, which makes the descent into The Gettin’ all the more bracing. Originally premiered in 2014, the work confronts racial injustice throughout American history. Dan Scully’s video design guides the audience through decades of discrimination, giving faces to the human beings whose legacies are marked by both violence and bravery. Robert Glasper’s reimagining of Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite adds layers of rhythm and urgency. Dancers in mid-century silhouettes evoke the civil rights era, though the men’s costuming feels less precise than the women’s. Some moments risk obscurity — abstraction clouding intention — but others strike with startling clarity. A visceral evocation of Eric Garner’s death renders the air taut. This is not tidy history but a confrontation with repetition, asking whether freedom is ever fully realized.

Across two decades, Abraham has made the personal public, probing how race, gender and sexuality contour American life. His choreography does not offer resolution. Instead, it stays in the friction — where beauty and violence, joy and grief, memory and urgency coexist. The anniversary program, like Abraham’s career itself, resists the easy out.