A.I.M By Kyle Abraham Is Coming To USC in February

Visions and Voices, USC's premiere arts and humanities program, will present the acclaimed New York-based contemporary dance company A.I.M by Kyle Abraham at historic Bovard Auditorium on Wednesday, February 15, 2023.

Founded in 2006, the mission of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham is to create a body of dance-based work that is galvanized by Black culture and history. A.I.M's founder and artistic director says, "As an artist born in the late 1970s, I've experienced a change in society that brings me hope. My choreography is a reflection of that hope, but it also lives in the reality of my experiences and the cultural wok that still needs to be done."

An Untitled Love is one of Abraham's newest evening-length works. Drawing from the catalog of Grammy Award-winning R&B legend D'Angelo, the creative exaltation pays homage to the complexities of self-love and Black love, while serving as a thumping mixtape celebrating our culture, family, and community.

"I fell in love with D'Angelo's debut album Brown Sugar when I was an undergrad at Morgan State University, a Historically Black University, in Baltimore in 1995," explains Abraham. "Within his songs existed the histories and Neo-romanticism of Black Love in America. The same year marked The Million Man March, a defining moment for Black men in the U.S. to unite against injustice. As part of my extended exploration of personal identity through movement, it feels important for me to dive into a process that explores and celebrates that unity and that love, in all its facets."

It will be followed by an intimate conversation with dancers and Abraham, a MacArthur Fellow, Joyce Creative Residency artist, and Doris Duke Award recipient who was named the Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Professorship in Dance at USC's Glorya Kaufman School of Dance in 2021.

Get more information about the event, which is free and open to the public, and make reservations at visionsandvoices.usc.edu.