Timothy Johnson: Eulalie Spence! She was able to specifically and personally write her characters in such a way that she made the "ordinary everyday person" extraordinary. And she did this because she was indeed so painstakingly honest about portraying them as human beings, not as some cardboard copies of what someone might think someone who lives in Harlem is like. No. Every single character in these plays that we're presenting are so fully realized. And along with it, she wrote these characters with dialects. And I celebrate the way she did that because as we know, this was a time of the Great Migration where so many moved from the South to the North in hopes of a better life. And my mother was one of those very people who migrated from Salvisa, Kentucky to Cleveland, Ohio. And Jo, I hear my mother in the dialects of these characters. There are these rhythmic patterns in the dialects of her characters that inherently create beats of sound and thought that transmit beyond time and space, connecting the character and the listener to something more which is ancestral and spiritual.

Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of Free Music Archive

Jo Reed:  From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed

Maria Rosario Jackson:  The ability to have art, culture, design in our lives as part of our daily lived experience that is a really critical element of places where all people can thrive, and it's part of what we aspire to as a just society.  And I think that the NEA is a national resource that helps to ensure that all people have the ability to lead artful lives. This includes opportunities to explore our creativity and imagination, opportunities to express ourselves, to tell our own stories on our own terms, and learn about others, all the while acknowledging and celebrating our common humanity.  So the NEA is a key player in making sure that the arts are an important part of our collective efforts to truly be a nation of opportunity and possibility.

Jo Reed:  That was the Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson. Chair Jackson was sworn into that position a little over a year ago. I had spoken to her then about her thoughts about the arts in all its possibilities and the arts endowment at that moment of reopening and reimagining the art sector…and we thought that her one-year anniversary was a good time for a follow-up, for her to share her reflections, observations and some of the agency’s accomplishments of the past year, as well as her ideas, plans, and initiatives for the Arts Endowment going forward. 

Jo Reed:  Chair Jackson, welcome.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  It's great to be with you, Jo. 

Jo Reed:  You came to the agency at a really challenging moment, but also at a time filled with opportunities.  The creative sector was severely affected by the pandemic, and I know you've traveled across the country speaking with artists and arts administrators, so I'm really curious what you have observed both about the challenges that the arts are facing but also the vitality of the arts and arts organizations across the country.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  The last three years have been really complicated.  They've been tough.  All aspects of the cultural sector were impacted, and everyone was challenged to think differently and adjust to how to work in a new environment.  I hear some stories of hardship and loss, but I also hear stories that are really heartening:  people re-imagining how to connect with communities, how to support artists, how to advance opportunities to live artful lives, all in an environment that we couldn't predict, and without question there's so many lessons in our experience over the past three years.  We need the opportunity to harvest what we've learned.  I believe that.  And as I've spoken with different audiences in the past year, I always talk about how we can't just uncritically aspire to snap back to what was pre-pandemic.  We have to take stock and figure out what we've learned, figure out what's been affirmed, what's been challenged, what might even have been debunked.  Our arts ecosystems are much like our natural ecosystems, they're shifting, demanding new ways of working and new ways of gauging success and progress.

Jo Reed:  Well, what part can the Arts Endowment play in encouraging this taking stock and rethinking the arts and creating an environment for that rethinking? 

Maria Rosario Jackson:  I'm really excited about leaning into our identity not only as a grant maker but also as a national resource.  We are in a moment when the arts sector has to reckon with what the next version of itself needs to be, you know, what it needs to look like, how it needs to function and, again, relatedly how we gauge progress and hold ourselves accountable.  The Arts Endowment has to be a partner, I think, and a source of support in that process, and to me this means bolstering our ability to convene, to create learning communities, to create the forums for much-needed conversations and explorations.  I think we have a role to play in lifting up important ideas and new and more impactful ways of working.  I think we have a role to play in encouraging creativity and imagination and in helping people to dream big and think outside of the box as we create the next version of the cultural sector.  The sector creates opportunities for people to live artful lives, that's our work.  And to understand how to do that in a different environment is part of what the Arts Endowment has to encourage. You know, a sector that recognizes that the arts have the greatest power and impact when they don't exist in isolation, when they don't exist in the bubble.  I think this is something that we need to advance.

Jo Reed:  Well, you've noted that many arts organizations are thinking very creatively about engaging with audiences, and I wonder if there are any examples that particularly stayed with you as you traveled throughout the country. 

Maria Rosario Jackson:   You know, I actually prefer to think beyond the notion of just audiences.  For many years in my own work when I talk about arts participation I've used the concept of publics rather than audiences.  I think it includes participation as audience but it also holds many other ways of engaging, you know, thinking about making, doing, teaching, learning, in addition to participating as audience or to consuming art.  But I think to your larger point, organizations around the country are showing a lot of imagination and creativity in reaching people and making arts experiences available.  So many organizations have deeper experience with virtual participation now, and know better about the possibilities and the limitations of that modality.  Many organizations have kept parts of virtual participation practices that they resorted to during the height of the pandemic, and they're re-imagining the connection or even interdependence of virtual participation and live participation as it pertains to audience engagement as well as instruction even in some cases.  In recent years I think people have had to deal with the challenges of touring and getting audiences to their conventional presenting venues.  And some organizations have turned to increasingly lifting up artists from their own communities in the absence of being able to tour, and they've expanded presentation practices to more frequently include community venues like churches and community centers.  So I think there's a lot of innovation in that, and also there's a lot of lifting up of practices that were on the margins before the pandemic that became the way of working in the last three years, so they've shown up as we emerge from the pandemic possibly as continued practices that are not so marginal anymore.

Jo Reed:  You and I had a conversation when you first came to the Arts Endowment as chair, and in that interview last year you said you wanted to listen to what people in the arts sector were saying, and I wonder if anything in particular resonated with you.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  So much.  I think travel in the last year has been so interesting and instructive.  I went to a wide range of places in all regions of the country.  So I visited urban, suburban, rural communities, and talked with artists and arts administrators from all artistic disciplines as well as people from other fields like the health and transportation community development who are also working with artists and arts organizations.  I met with mayors and elected officials, and I had the great honor of seeing the work of many of our grantees as well as visiting with people who benefit from the work of our grantees.  And in many conversations and site visits we learned much more, with much more nuance, about the impacts of the work that we're supporting, the direct impacts and the ripple effects.  So for example we saw evidence of Our Town investments from many years ago that are just now bearing fruit because of the nature and tempo of development.  It was really heartening to learn that an NEA seed grant that supported a planning process or a feasibility study 5 to 10 years ago, and 5 to 10 years later there's a huge state of the arts artist housing complex that actually counts the NEA's seed grant as part of its origin story.  That was an example from LA, from Los Angeles.  Similarly, we saw a beautiful performing arts center, a regional performing arts center, in a small town in Oregon that also had a similar origin story.  It started with an Our Town investment from many years ago.  So as we did a site visit to understand the work at the intersection of arts and health with the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs through our Creative Forces program, it was really exciting to see the replication of that program and its evolution to include programming and services beyond clinical settings but now in communities outside of clinical settings to serve military personnel and their families.  That was really exciting to see the growth of that program and the impact that it's having.  One trip that I did with staff members to Alabama, we visited Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, and we actually did the tour with the director of the state arts agency as well as the director of the regional arts organization for that part of the country.  And it was so invaluable to learn about how they function and how they can imagine more strategic alignments among all of us. So how can federal, regional, state, and local agencies work more effectively if we're aligned?  There was an opportunity to explore a bit of that.  We were also able to talk with grantees and gained deeper insights about the possible removal of barriers to access to resources for historically marginalized communities, and there were really terrific insights that came from those conversations.  In that same trip in Alabama we also saw evidence of how the NEA can be inspirational and catalytic.  When we were in Montgomery we were able to visit a place called King's Canvas.  It's a creative and cultural hub on the west side of town, and it was started by a local resident, Kevin King, and his intention was to give artists in this primarily Black community, a space in which to connect or reconnect with each other and with their own creativity.  Kevin told us that he had initially been inspired by the creative placemaking work supported by the NEA many years ago.  It was exciting to see the impact of that work on something very real in that particular community and to understand how it gave Kevin a greater vision for what's possible in his neighborhood.  That trip was really rich.  There's more, I mean, over the course of the year I had the opportunity to meet National Heritage Fellows as well as jazz masters, and learn not only about their artistry but also about the roles that they play in their communities through their art forms, and the roles that they play in the ecosystems that support the art forms themselves, again, learning more about how the arts don't exist in a bubble or in isolation. 

Jo Reed:  You've said very interestingly that the art process can be as important as the product, and I'd really like you to say more about what you mean by this, and also how the NEA can support this.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  Sure.  This idea that art process can be as important as or in some cases even more important than art product, that's been one of my guiding principles for a large part of my career.  And I believe that being engaged in an art process or a creative process not only for the purposes of developing the product at the end but for the benefits that being engaged in creativity has to offer, I think that that's important in so many different ways.  There are many examples of work that the NEA supports whether it's around arts therapy or art in public health or arts in education, sometimes focused on trauma informed learning environments, or the work of the Our Town Program that focuses on community engagement and creating healthier communities, all of these are very process focused.  And I think it's important to lift up artwork as product when that is what the artist or the creators intend to deliver, but equally important is the emphasis on just lifting up that creative process and recognizing that sometimes the thing at the end isn't the point. The point is being engaged in creativity, in imagination and that that journey itself has value, it has value related to health, related to the discovery of your own potential as a maker.   I can go on and on about that because I feel strongly that our human participation in creative process is part of what makes us whole.  I'm really happy to share that we just added creative process to our definition of artistic excellence in the NEA's newly published grant guidelines, and that adjustment I think helps us lean into advancing a more meaningful focus on the creative process and art making. 

Jo Reed:  You've used the term "arts in all", and this is central to your vision.  So this is another two-part question which is first, can you really define that term for us and then explain its centrality to the work of the arts endowment?

Maria Rosario Jackson:  Sure.  I think unleashing the full power of art requires animating the work at the intersection of other dimensions of our lives, so arts in education, arts in community development, economic development, climate, the very important work happening at the intersection of arts and health and wellbeing.  I've been referring to the necessary integration of arts in our daily lives and to the integration of arts in other areas of policy and practice as arts in all, so arts in all refers to the intention of full integration of the arts in how we live.  Not only does the concept push up against the relegation of arts as something separate or just extra, but we're also leaning into arts integration that will create new opportunities and unlock resources for artists and arts organizations.  I mean, there's lots of examples of this in the NEAs work.  A recent one is a collaboration with the General Services Administration, and that's a collaboration to encourage a diverse range of artists to join the National Art Registry and have their work considered for upcoming artist commissions.  In that collaboration together with GSA there's about 17 million dollars in commissions around the country that we hope to make more available to artists.  I certainly hope that we can continue to work with GSA and other federal agencies to help unlock opportunities and lift up the many ways that the arts contribute to society.  As I've said before, the sector doesn't and shouldn't exist in a bubble. 

Jo Reed:  You've expanded the NEA's ongoing work at the intersection of art and health.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  Yes, this is an area where the NEA has worked for many years.  It shows up in our grants, our research, our national initiatives.  We've worked for a number of years with the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs on our Creative Forces Initiative, which I mentioned earlier.  And last year we announced the inaugural grants in our Creative Forces Community Engagement Program, and these grants aim to improve the health and wellbeing and quality of life for military service members and veterans exposed to trauma as well as their families and caregivers through art making experiences.  We also recently partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the CDC, and the CDC Foundation to launch an initiative that helped engage artists and arts organizations to promote COVID vaccine readiness in their communities, and as a result, with funding from the CDC, the CDC Foundation awarded grants to 30 organizations nationwide to support these efforts, and we're really proud of that.  It's also important to recognize that arts and health work also extends to the impact of art space strategies in our communities.  So building social cohesion and paying attention to community wellbeing, that's really important.  Last year the NEA contributed to an equitable long-term recovery and resilience plan, and this is something that was led by the US Department of Health and Human Services.  It's utilizing a whole of government approach, and the plan emphasizes arts and culture is critical to achieving success in a number of domains including belonging and civic muscle, and there's a lot more. I mean, I've always admired NEA's work at this particular intersection and believe that we have so much more to contribute as the nation seeks to heal and mend in so many ways.  There's lots of interest from colleagues in other federal agencies about how the arts play a role in addressing mental health and our social fabric among other issues, and we'll step up to be good partners in that work. 

Jo Reed:  Well, speaking of a whole of government approach, in September an executive order on culture vitality advances a whole of government policy for the arts, the humanities, and museum and library services.  And its purpose, as I read it, is to integrate the arts and humanities, and museum and library services, into policies and programs and partnerships throughout the federal government which of course this aligns so nicely with your vision of arts in all.  So I'm curious how you see the agency continuing and expanding its outreach and collaborations with other agencies.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  So I'm hopeful that this executive order bolsters our work at the intersection of arts and other sectors in ways that are both known and surprising.  I have appointed a senior staff member dedicated to moving this work forward, and staff at the NEA as a whole recognize this is a priority.  Advancing partnerships with other federal agencies to extend the mission in reach of the NEA is something that's very central to us now, and I'm very much looking forward to continuing to build relationships with other agency leaders and staff that can carry out the work hopefully in very durable ways.  These are win-win relationships.  I really do believe that when we say we aspire to be a nation of opportunity and possibility, arts, culture and design have to be integrated in all our efforts to do that, and that certainly includes work at these intersections. 

Jo Reed:  Well, let's look at the year ahead.  The NEA of course, we fund the arts, but you also want to emphasize the agency's role as a national resource for the arts ecosystems.  What are some of the ways you see the agency assuming this role? 

Maria Rosario Jackson:  So these are the ideas that we've been talking about with arts in all.  Our work with other agencies is impacting how the NEA is and will continue to show up.  We continue to be a funder, a grant making organization, which is how we're primarily known, but we'll also focus on our role as a national resource for creating and bolstering healthy arts ecosystems, and these are ecosystems that contribute to building healthy communities where all people can thrive.  As a national resource, the NEA will access all of its assets, all of the assets that it has at its disposal, and this includes grant money and financial resources, and it also includes our relationships to other federal agencies like the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, all the while identifying ways in which the arts can contribute in these realms and, again, unlocking opportunities for new investments and opportunities for arts organizations and artists.  We also have access to the bullhorn of the executive branch and the imprimatur of the federal government, and this is also an asset that we can use strategically.  The infrastructure of state arts organizations, regional arts organizations, and local arts agencies, as well as other networks, that's something else that we can leverage more intentionally as we go about this work.  Another asset is the view and analysis that we can render from a national perspective.  That's not something that everyone has available to them, so the ability to share that and make sure that we're making the best use of it as we deliver information and understanding about trends in the field, that's another important role, and our ability to commission and conduct research about the roles of arts in our society focusing on health and wellbeing but also other areas. And last, I think our ability to connect and convene communities of learning and communities of practice, our ability to catalyze and amplify more effective ways of working, that's something that I'm really excited about. 

Jo Reed:  With Executive Order 13985, the Biden administration advanced equity and justice across the federal government by calling on federal agencies and departments to assess whether and to what extent their programs and policies perpetuate systemic barriers for historically marginalized communities.  How is the NEA responding to this directive?

Maria Rosario Jackson:  So last year the NEA introduced the Equity Action Plan for fiscal years 2022 to 2026, and this plan builds on our advancement of community engagement and inclusion and equitable access to the arts for all Americans.  This has resulted in changes such as making our grant guidelines available in Spanish, and working to provide additional outreach and resources about the NEA's grant opportunities.  We're also working on a pilot program with the regional arts organizations focused on advancing the work of organizations that can help us increase access to arts opportunities to underserved populations, and we hope that these are going to be systemic investments that are durable.  Additionally, the concepts of artful lives and arts in all, those inherently have a focus on inclusion.  They embrace a diverse range of art forms, and create pathways for more opportunities in which the arts can impact people's lives and benefit us.

Jo Reed:  Obviously there is a lot going on at the Arts Endowment, and I wonder what is on the horizon that you are really excited to see? 

Maria Rosario Jackson:  So I'm, again, really excited about the NEA showing up as a national resource.  There are some specific things that I'm looking forward to in addition to things I've already talked about, and one is a series of national conversations that the NEA will host about the future of the sector, the intersection between arts and other areas of policy and practice, the role of the arts in civic infrastructure at the local level, and on a related note the creation of learning communities that help people harvest lessons from the last few years and not just uncritically snap back or aspire to snap back to what was pre-pandemic. So I think that these national conversations are really necessary, and I'm so delighted that the NEA can play a role in helping to make that available.  We're looking at bolstering some existing programs and program areas like our work with the Mayors Institute on City Design and the Citizens Institute on Rural Design, so the enhancement and augmentation of those and possibly adjacent new programs that, again, help to build capacity around art design and impacting in communities and cities, that's really important to me.  Another thing I'm really excited about is helping to unlock opportunities for artists and arts organizations to contribute to mending our social fabric, alongside federal investments and our physical infrastructure.  So as we think of rebuilding the physical structures in communities and cities, we also have to look at the social fabric and understand that there are really important connections between our work in physical infrastructure and social fabric and social infrastructure.  There's some work underway that I think is necessary and really important, and it's focused on local arts agencies, how they operate, what they need how they can be most impactful going forward, and that's a body of research that will be underway soon.  There's also some research on historically Black colleges and universities that will help us better understand their roles in communities in relation to local arts ecosystems, and more generally to the cultural sector.  This will help us understand how we as the NEA can be most helpful in relation to those institutions.  So I'm excited about the NEA'S role in walking alongside the arts community as we adapt and dream big together. 

Jo Reed:  And I think that is a good place to leave it.  Chair Jackson, thank you.  Thank you for giving me your time, and here’s to the year ahead!

Maria Rosario Jackson:  Thank you, Jo.  It's been wonderful talking with you. 

Jo Reed:  Thank you. That was the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson. We have a video of Chair Jackson discussing in depth the principles for engaging in and living an artful life. You can find it on the NEA’s YouTube channel, and we’ll have a link to it in our show notes.  You can keep up with the work of the Arts Endowment by following us on twitter @NEAarts and by checking out our website at arts.gov

You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. We’d love to know your thoughts—email us at artworkspod@arts.gov. And follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple, it helps people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Maria Rosario Jackson: I think unleashing the full power of art requires animating the work at the intersection of other dimensions of our lives, so arts in education, arts in community development, economic development, climate, the very important work happening at the intersection of arts and health and wellbeing. I've been referring to the necessary integration of arts in our daily lives and to the integration of arts in other areas of policy and practice as arts in all, so arts in all refers to the intention of full integration of the arts in how we live. Not only does the concept push up against the relegation of arts as something separate or just extra, but we're also leaning into arts integration that will create new opportunities and unlock resources for artists and arts organizations. I mean, there's lots of examples of this in the NEAs work. One example is our collaboration with the General Services Administration, and that's a collaboration to encourage a diverse range of artists to join the National Art Registry and have their work considered for upcoming artist commissions. In that collaboration together with GSA there's about 17 million dollars in commissions around the country that we hope to make more available to artists. I certainly hope that we can continue to work with GSA and other federal agencies to help unlock opportunities and lift up the many ways that the arts contribute to society. As I've said before, the sector doesn't and shouldn't exist in a bubble.

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed.

Choreographer Kyle Abraham has expanded the vocabulary of dance—whether creating work for his own company A.I.M by Kyle Abraham or choreographing commissioned work for companies like Alvin Ailey Paul Taylor, New York City Ballet or the Royal Ballet. Abraham seamlessly meshes different styles of dance and music to create an unexpected and coherent whole.  He creates dance with purpose: as the founder and artistic director of A.I.M. he has made body of dance-based work that is animated by Black culture and history, work that is informed by and made in conjunction with artists across a range of disciplines that explores the relationship between visual art, music and dance.

He often draws from his personal experiences as a gay Black man and the struggles, past and present, of being Black in the United States-- confronting issues like police brutality, the generational impact of mass incarceration, and gang violence through dance. But Abraham also finds inspiration in the vitality, joy, and cultural creativity that’s found in Black communities; in fact, he relies on a sense of community to inform his style of movement, which he calls “a hybrid of gritty and a bit of elegance.” His dances are propulsive and deeply musical. He has been praised by the New York Times “for his unique talent for finding the person within the dancer and the bodies within a body.”

Kyle Abraham has won more honors that I have time to name—but they include a  Princess Grace Statue Award, a Doris Duke Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship.  In 2022, Abraham was selected to be an inaugural member of the Black Genius Brain Trust and was chosen by the Kennedy Center as one of their Next 50 Cultural Leaders, an honor celebrating individuals “who are lighting the way forward through art and action.”  That, Kyle Abraham does as anyone lucky enough to see his work can attest to. I count myself a huge fan and last year was lucky enough to see his evening-length work “An Untitled Love” and that was where I began my conversation with Kyle. A word before we go to the interview: the audio can be a bit echoey in parts but Kyle’s humor, intelligence, charm, and heart comes through clearly. Here’s our conversation.

Jo Reed: Okay, Kyle Abraham, I’m going to begin at the end, <laughs> which is I was fortunate enough to see your beautifully compelling celebration of black joy called “Untitled Love” last year, and you can see me bowing.  You can’t, but I am.

<laughter>

Kyle Abraham: Thank you.

Jo Reed: And I would just love to have you tell us about that dance and what inspired it.

Kyle Abraham: Yeah, sure.  Thank you.  So “An Untitled Love” is a work that in 2018 I started just thinking about, and in the early part of the concept I was just thinking about, “Yeah, how can I make something that really kind of is celebrating ideas of really black love but also self-love in a way, and through the music of D’Angelo?” and the through line for me was thinking about my first year in college, going to Morgan State in Baltimore, Maryland, and D’Angelo’s first album, the Brown Sugar album, coming out at that time, and then thinking about my parents, who met at a historically black college in Wilberforce, Ohio, Central State University, and trying to just kind of think about what their experience was like, think about the beautiful kind of lineage of love throughout our culture that I wanted to find a way to embrace and celebrate in a way that also acknowledged the music and kind of like soulful generational history and kind of like time capsuling that you can get from D’Angelo’s music.

Jo Reed: Well, let’s go back to that beginning, and tell me about your upbringing, and I’m also curious how art factored into it.

Kyle Abraham:  I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, originally, and I grew up with parents who worked for the Pittsburgh Public School system and wanted my sister and I to really just be exposed to art and culture to the utmost.  You know, they would give us private piano classes at the YMCA in Pittsburgh.  We would go to jazz brunch in the city, where we’d just hear live jazz musicians playing over a brunch, a special treat whenever we could do that, but I grew up playing a lot of different instruments.  I played the cello, the French horn, the piano, did chorus and choir for a while, So all of that was definitely impact, and they definitely tried to encourage just learning in all its forms, they definitely had an appreciation for all things art.  But ironically, I didn’t see a dance performance until I was probably like 15 or 16 years old.  That was seeing the Joffrey Ballet perform program called “Billboards,” which was all set to the music of Prince.

Jo Reed: Wow! I bet that opened up doors for you!

Kyle Abraham: Yeah! My friends saw how excited I was, my friends that I went to high school with, and they convinced me to audition for a high school musical that we had in our public school.  And then the teachers there gave me a scholarship to study dance over the summer to get better for the musical the next year, and I winded up spending half day my senior year going to Pittsburgh, their performing arts high school, CAPA, so I went half day to CAPA and then the other half a day I went to a high school called Schenley, which is where Andy Warhol went to high school.  So it was great to kind of have both of those lives, and I was able to play the cello still at Schenley while studying, you know, all my academic courses and then study dance in the afternoon at Creative and Performing Arts high school, CAPA.

Jo Reed: Do you remember-- and this is a hard question--

Kyle Abraham: <laughs>

Jo Reed: --but I wonder if you remember what it was about dance and seeing that and seeing the Joffrey that just sort of made your body explode?

Kyle Abraham: Yeah.  I do remember, because I think the thing for me is, you know, I was a big rave kid.  I was heavily into social dance, but the thing that I saw on that stage in Pittsburgh was I saw dance in a way that I had never seen it before, and I wanted to learn more about it.  You know, me, like every person I can think of, has at some point gone into their room and made a dance to emote <laughs> in some kind of way, and seeing the vocabulary that those dancers were using, it made me that much more curious, and different from me playing my cello, where I could sit in my room, regardless of its size and play, dance was something I felt like I needed more space to be able to explore, and there was a lot that I needed to just learn that I couldn’t do on my own.

Jo Reed: And you went to SUNY Purchase and studied dance there and got a BFA.

Kyle Abraham: Yes.

Jo Reed: And then you got an MFA from NYU, and you go on to dance with David Dorfman’s company and Bill T. Jones, but you quickly move to choreography.

Kyle Abraham: Right. <laughs>

Jo Reed: And I’m curious about what went into that decision.

Kyle Abraham: Well, you know, I think maybe because I started dancing so late, you know, by the time I was taking more than like a class, I was probably, like, probably turned 17 already.  So by the time I get to Purchase, and even that first year of studying dance in that way, I thought about myself being a choreographer, and I think what happens to a lot of people when you’re going to a conservatory program, even if you go to school to be a choreographer it’s very easy to get caught up your senior year in particular with what your friends are doing and, you know, for a moment there I think I lost what my goal was in being choreographer and winded up getting a dancing job with Bill T. Jones, which didn’t last long at all. <laughs> Y ou know, for a bunch of reasons.  But I think what I realized, after getting fired from that job, <laughs> is that I wanted to be in the room but I didn’t necessarily need to or want to be a dancer in the room.  I just wanted to be in the room because I loved, and still to this day, love Bill T. Jones so much and I love that work, but it was more about me wanting to be in the room.  I think the beautiful thing about me getting to work with David Dorfman several years later is I learned that I wanted to be around people who wanted to make work with a certain kind of social conscious effort and people that were really interested in that kind of commentary, and I didn’t want to be in a company that was like a full-time situation, and so working with David was amazing in every way.  He is the most kind of considerate, kind, supportive person to work with and was so encouraging to me as a dancer and as a dancemaker.  We were given a lot of different tasks in the room, and those tasks sometimes when I realized it wasn’t going to be in his piece.  I was like, “Aw, I’m just going to save that for myself.”

<laughter>

Kyle Abraham: You know, I feel like he always was encouraging.  And yeah, I think that was part of that journey and a way that led me to focus that much more on my own work.  And while I was working with David I was making my own work as well, but not necessarily at the same kind of capacity.  I think it was, ironically, at the time while working with David, that my work started to gain more exposure and opportunity, so much so that I had to make a choice.  Either my company could tour or I would be touring with David, and knowing that I was employing other people, I felt like I needed to kind of part ways in that way.

Jo Reed: Okay.  I got to get into your own company, because man, you started one really quickly.

Kyle Abraham: <laughs> Ah.

Jo Reed: You know, it was called A.I.M, Abraham In Motion, originally.  What was the thinking here?

<laughter>

Kyle Abraham: Well, you know, I think, hm, what can I say?  Well, yes, I always loved making work.  So there’s that.  That’s like the easy part.  I think without even realizing it I wanted to in some ways make work that was very much from my perspective connecting to different aspects of my background, albeit either my background in playing classical music or growing up within hip hop and rave culture.  It’s kind of one and the same, but I wanted that to find its way in a dance company setting and I felt like what was happening for me basically from graduate school which I finished in 2006, to 2010, which is when the company had its big breakthrough.  In that four-year time in between those things, I was given a lot of opportunities to perform as a solo artist, and they were great opportunities, but then I would say, “Okay.  Well, you should see the group.  You should see my dancers,” and tried to make opportunities like that because I did feel like in a lot of cases the group work spoke to me that much more about the kind of social commentary that I was interested in addressing.  So that’s a big part of it.  Trying to acknowledge and understand that in some cases, not all, I do love to have an ensemble to tell a bigger story and get a bigger message across than I can sometimes do in solo form, either myself dancing or me making a solo for another artist, like a Wendy Whelan or a Misty Copeland or a Calvin Royal.  Working with those dancers on solos is real exciting and fun but it’s different than working with a larger ensemble that I have kind of like honed and can kind of cultivate and curate in a particular way, which of course is different from those commissioned works with those larger companies as well.

Jo Reed: Oh, I can absolutely understand that.

Kyle Abraham: <laughs>

Jo Reed: But man, you’re also starting a business. <laughs> I mean...

Kyle Abraham: Yeah.

Jo Reed: And that has its own particular tedium involved, I would think. <laughs>

Kyle Abraham: Yeah.  Well, you know, I always thought that I was going to kind of either be a business major or business minor in some way.  You know, I always had a love for business.

Jo Reed: Oh.  Well, there you go.

Kyle Abraham: So... <laughs> Yeah.

<laughter>

Kyle Abraham: It’s like while some kids are like building like toy houses or whatever, I used to build banks.

<laughter>

Kyle Abraham: It was just fun for me.  I don’t know.

<laughter>

Jo Reed: Well, your work is so personal and it’s exciting, and it’s unexpected, and it’s work with purpose.  Themes of social justice, themes of community, recur throughout your work, all the way back to “Pavement,” which is a really early work that you did with the whole company.  Can you talk about how that piece came together?

Kyle Abraham: Sure, yeah.  So “Pavement” is a work that premiered in 2012. It’s premiere was at Harlem Stage in New York, ironically during Hurricane Sandy.  It <laughs> premiered that same time. In 2010, I was talking to one of my former dancers, Amber Parker, and said, “Amber, I feel like I want to make a dance about the film ‘Boyz n the Hood,’ and I want it to be—“ I don’t know why I said this-- “but to, like, music written for a contralto singer.” <laughs> Just like random, obscure thought. And I started just thinking about what that meant for me and where we as a nation were at in 2012.  I was going back home to Pittsburgh-- at that time I was still a Pennsylvania resident-- and voting there and thinking about, you know, Obama and what his election meant for not only our nation but for our community, as, like, growing up in a historically black community.  And then thinking, of course, about just the ebbs and flows of my community.  Looking at the buildings in my community and thinking, “Okay.  This building right here has been dilapidated for the last 15 years.  How do we as a neighborhood, as a community, how do we feel?  Does it make us feel like leaving home and our community?  Does it make us feel like coming back at some point and making a change?  Or do we feel like this is the best we got?”  And it made me think about my experience growing up and getting on the bus in a time of a lot of gang violence in Pittsburgh, which, ironically, happened around the same time as a film by John Singleton, “Boys n the Hood,” and trying to draw these parallels for me between the time capsule that is very clearly established in Singleton’s film but also reading W. E. B. Du Bois, “Souls of Black Folk,” and thinking about moments of hope that you can find in his writing, and ways in which I then could draw parallels to where those historically black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh of the Hill District and Homewood where they would’ve been in the ‘20s, and thinking about all those theaters, which were now boarded up, how thriving they were at a certain point in time.  So the work for me was addressing all of those things while <laughs> at the same time, ironically, (I was) making a work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which premiered that same year, called “Another Night,” set to Art Blakey’s version of “A Night in Tunisia,” and for me it was kind of making these works in a parallel way where “Pavement” is very much the drama.  It is very much addressing the kind of darkness of the time, the influx of HIV and AIDS on black communities in particular, of the crack epidemic in our community in particular, and knowing that is a powerful part of Americans’ history because there’s a whole other political conversation we could get into with the lack of resources that went into addressing those things, especially at that time.  But then also wanting to make a work at the same time, for Ailey in particular, that addressed the vitality in those communities previously.

Jo Reed: You are an interdisciplinary artist in that you use multimedia in your work.  You have a broad range of movements, and you’re someone whose dances are set to an extraordinary range of music.

Kyle Abraham: <laughs>

Jo Reed: From classical to urban to R&B to jazz, to hip hop, and I know I’m leaving a lot out.

Kyle Abraham: <laughs>

Jo Reed: So you have a very wide palette to draw from.  Can you kind of walk us through your aesthetic, how you describe your work and what animates it?

Kyle Abraham: Sure. I already kind of tried to give my parents their flowers, I definitely am very, very grateful to all that they’ve exposed me to and encouraged me to do and to be aware of just growing up, but I think in a lot of ways, in a lot of conversations I’ve been having over these past two years as you, you know, so many of us have had these Zoom, you know, <laughs> Zoom talks, et cetera, is me kind of unpacking how I saw an artist like Prince, and how in some ways on the dance side of things you could say that maybe I fashioned aspects of my career in a certain type of likeness, because Prince is someone who would’ve had a single on the R&B charts and at the same time a totally different song on the pop charts, and I don’t think he was ever ashamed to do that.  I felt like he not only felt empowered to do that but was like, “Yeah, this is just who I am.  This is what I want to be doing,” and maybe in seeing that, in seeing this black man be able to do this in that way, it made me feel like, “Yeah, of course this is what I want to do.  I can make a ballet for New York City Ballet, and I can make a piece for my predominately black company or for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater or wherever else, and speak to different topics,” because as black people we do not need to be monolithic.  So I can make a work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater called “Untitled America” that looks at the cyclical nature of families in and out of the prison system, and then I can go to New York City Ballet and make a work like “The Runaway,” which I’ve never addressed what it’s about, but <laughs> that’s a whole other conversation for another day.

Jo Reed: <laughs>

Kyle Abraham: But working with dancers on pointe and going from the classical music of Nico Muhly to the music of Watch the Throne to James Blake, et cetera, and know that it is all valid and it is in no way lessening who I am or who I want to be as an artist.  Yeah, all of it’s welcome.  I think I also like to think about sound, and any visual element as well, as these other players in the space. And I do love it when I can get to collaborate with different artists.  If it’s not my long-time collaborative partner in Dan Scully, who does a lot of my lighting and scenic designs, or Karen Young, who’s a good friend of mine who’s collaborated with me on works like “An Untitled Love” or “Untitled America,” both of those two artists being collaborators of mine for those works, but it’s also thinking about how can I connect with artists like Titus Kaphar when making a work for A.I.M called “Meditation: A Silent Prayer,” thinking about and honoring, kind of commemorating, all of the losses that we’ve had unjustly to black and brown bodies over the course of time, with text by Carrie Mae Weems?  So, it’s great to find space to bring in other artists as collaborators to reach not only a broader audience but reach the message that much more potently.

Jo Reed: I’m sure every piece is different--

Kyle Abraham: Yeah.

Jo Reed: --but I’m curious about your creative process, if you could walk us through it and what you’re thinking about in terms of the narrative as well as movement and how the pieces evolve and how they even get started.

Kyle Abraham: <laughs> Sure.  I mean, the process, I feel like it’s never the same really. But a lot of it, I think, in a lot of ways, maybe it’s the science nerd in me, it’s always starting, probably for a lot of choreographers, it’s starting with that bit of a hypothesis, right.  Like, how do these things play together, you know, in the case of a “Pavement”?  How does it work to take this kind of music written for a contralto singer and think about the writing of W. E. B. Du Bois and “Boyz n the Hood” and bring those things together in a modern-day work. So I think all of the works start with that bit of hypothesizing but then from there there’s space for me to explore in a way that, I don’t want to sound too esoteric, but maybe in some cases it’s creating phrase work.  So (it’s) me creating a series of steps that I either then teach to the dancers or keep for myself, or recording myself improvising over a period of time, and maybe I’ll have dancers learn those improvisations, and sometimes it’s task-based.  Maybe I will give the dancers a different series of prompts and those prompts will lead to something that I then will direct and try and find a way to make sense of.  But then there’s always a point in the process where I have to go back to what I wrote about and whatever kind of project narrative I would’ve constructed to kind of hypothesize this work in some way, and that’s the part that, I think, holds me accountable to what it is that I’m making.

Jo Reed: Let’s talk about the dancers.  How do you choose company members?  What’s the process for trying to identify people you want to work with?

Kyle Abraham: Yeah.  We’re <laughs> planning auditions right now, which is pretty daunting, hm, how do I get into it?  Okay, yes.  So one of the big things that I’m personally interested in, and what people may not know who aren’t in the dance world, maybe they just know the kind of cliché of a dancer being one of thousands or whatever in a room to get a singular job, but what I’ve been interested in doing definitely over the last 10 years is changing how that might be for a dancer and for a choreographer.  So I will invite maybe a handful of other choreographers in the room with me who hopefully are looking for dancers as well, collaborators, and do a bit of a shared audition. So that’s one thing.  But to get more to the question itself is: I’m looking for what I don’t have in the room.  You know, if I have a lot of dancers who can replicate material to do it exactly like I do it, that’s great, sure.  But I also need some dancers and collaborators who can generate and create movement on their own because at times it can be a bit redundant if it’s just my voice over and over again for an hour.  Hopefully your listeners don’t feel the same way. <laughs> But that’s part of it. And I think the other thing is just sometimes finding someone who doesn’t do anything like me at all and looks so unique that I have to have that person in the room, and those people sometimes are tricky because now as the company expands and the opportunities for us to expand as a company and to present repertory works, so works that are shorter in length and sometimes works that were previously choreographed and created by another choreographer, I have to think about those artists and whether or not they’re able to do those works as well because the dancers in our company are salaried 52 weeks out of the year and we want to make sure everyone is working and feeling seen and feeling respected in all the things.  So it does get that much more complicated, but in that audition process it may start off with, yes, this large number of people in a room that then gets whittled down to a callback. But it slowly over the course of a week starts to whittle itself down and I start interviewing people, because I realize, especially in these pandemic years, just how important it is to get to know the people that we’re going to be spending time with intimately and making sure it is the right fit.  So that’s the-- maybe one of the other major puzzle pieces to the equation.

Jo Reed: And how do you actually work with them?  I mean, we often hear about choreographers making a dance on someone.  How much of a collaborative effort are the dances that you create with the company?

Kyle Abraham: I’m so glad you’re asking me that question because I think that there needs to be just a real clear understanding for everyone to know that in what we do as dancers with choreographers it is innately collaborative.  Even if I’ve generated every step as a choreographer and the dancer is taking that step and putting it on a stage, that in its own right is worthy of that person being listed as a collaborator because there’s so much trust that goes into that transfer of information and the embodiment of the information that you’re sharing.  So there’s that for sure, but aside from that, I’m someone that wants to make sure that we can have conversations about what we’re making.  How does it feel?  You know, what is it saying to you as a person who’s actually having to embody this movement?  You know, a lot of times I’m not performing anymore, especially when I’m making commissioned work, I’m definitely not performing with those dancers, so I want to know what that movement feels like for them, and if it doesn’t feel good, we should change it. <laughs> You know, it’s like it’s not that deep.  We can change the set. Depending on the themes of the work, sometimes we might spend more time talking than actually moving because I want to kind of maybe get to the depths and the crux of what is driving me, and for those artists and collaborators, hopefully it’s a bit of therapy but there’s a bit of it where we’re really kind of trying to unpack a lot of things that are kind of bubbling up for us on both sides, and I think “An Untitled Love” is one of those really beautiful examples of that type of process because very early on in the process I asked the dancers to bring in photos of like a couple that they thought best represented like love for them, and because it was so early on in the process, there were a lot of dancers that I’d just hired who were in that room and that sharing and that level of vulnerability I think instantaneously helped to create a very not only safe space but a free space for us to feel loved, supported, seen and celebrated as an ensemble.

Jo Reed: And what about when you’re commissioned to do a work, Kyle, like for Alvin Ailey?  You just premiered a work in December there for Alvin Ailey, “Are You in Your Feelings?”  Is it different for you to create a commissioned piece as opposed to one that you create for your own company?  And I’m also curious, piggybacking on that, how you create a work for dancers you don’t really know.

Kyle Abraham: Hm.  Yeah, yeah.  It could be very different.  I mean, Ailey is an exception to the rule, in a way, because they definitely feel like family.  Yeah.  And every time I’m there I’m thinking, “Okay.  Well, if I come back, this is what I want to do next,” you know.  I also knew going into “Are You in Your Feelings?” what the experience of “Untitled America” was like for those dancers.  That dance, in particular, required such a level of vulnerability and presence that at times I think it could’ve taken a toll on them.  Also knowing the reach and the impact that a work like that could have on a audience, I wanted to make something that felt that much more celebratory in a way that they could feel uplifted and just find joy.  So that was really important, and overall with Ailey in particular I’m always thinking about their reach and their audience.  The Ailey audience is such a exciting and vibrant audience unto itself, and so I think about things like the kind of like signature Ailey walk at times or knowing that sometimes that audience is coming from church and they’re going to go see “Revelations,” you know.  (laughs)

Jo Reed: <laughs>

Kyle Abraham: You know, it’s just part of the culture.  It’s part of our culture, and it’s part of what excites me.  You know, I also, of course, think about the lineage of Mr. Ailey and just the brilliance and the generosity of Robert Battle in the way that he looks at programming for the company.  You know, thinking about the amount of inspiration that you can clearly see from Mr. Ailey’s works that delve into theater and his love of jazz music, I like to find those parallels in what I get to create for that company as well, and sometimes maybe mix that up and play with it in a way that is unexpected, but that’s one of the ways in which, for Ailey in particular, I’m approaching it.  Now, when I’m going to a company that I don’t have as much of a history with, it is that much more challenging because it’s kind of like, you know, being, like, for a food reference, like, what do you call it, like sous vide, <laughs>

Jo Reed: <laughs>

Kyle Abraham: You don’t really know how it’s going to turn out, you know.  It could fail, <laughs> but you never know.  Because it’s a bit of a vacuumed process, and you’re hoping to build some genuine connections. Working at a institution like The Royal Ballet in London was really exciting and challenging for a lot of reasons.  You know, some of those ballet institutions in particular have so much going on at one time that it’s hard to kind of get deep with a dancer in the creative process. And it’s also hard to do the prep work, to know, “Okay.  Well, what am I going to bring to this institution that they’ve never seen before,?” and maybe that’s not important.  Maybe it’s not about what they haven’t seen before but, like, “What is the most honest thing that I can make in a way that feels authentically me while challenging their dancers and introducing their dancers and introducing their audience to me?”

Jo Reed: You know, you were an outlier in more ways than one during the pandemic.

Kyle Abraham: <laughs>

Jo Reed: You kept those dancers on the payroll and with their health insurance, and that deserves a great shout-out, so I’m shouting that out.  And you didn’t do Zoom rehearsals.

Kyle Abraham: <laughs> No.

Jo Reed: I mean, even though you’re working on “Untitled Love” and “Requiem.”  Tell us what you did instead.

Kyle Abraham: Sure.  Well, you know, thank you for that first, just the first mention about keeping the dancers employed and everything, but I can’t take credit for that entirely.  I definitely need to give the majority of the credit to our company’s executive director, Sydnie Liggett-Dennis, who just did such an amazing job not only over the pandemic but continues to kind of build and support ideas around community within a working place.  For the company, you know, I think thinking about Zoom and rehearsals-- it was really challenging for me, and I don’t want to say in a way that comes off with a certain type of privilege to say that I couldn’t rehearse, but I think there’s a whole other thing that wasn’t fully being addressed, is that, like, it could have and should’ve been okay for people to not be okay.  You know, like if you felt like you couldn’t work during the Zoom era in particular, that should have been acceptable, because it was really daunting and challenging emotionally for a lot of people. But I thought with everything that I was doing over the pandemic, whether it’s making several dances or focusing in particular on the ways in which we could work, my goal was to focus in on what we could do, not what we couldn’t do, and knowing that space in New York <laughs> in particular is so expensive that we don’t always have the time to sit and talk and unpack a work the way in which I really love to do and the way which we do when we’re in a residency around the world really.  I thought, “Okay.  Well, this is something we can do.”  So the dancers and I would get together and we would watch a different film or different TV episode or maybe someone would have suggested reading, and we would talk about what we saw and find ways in which it connected to either the characterization that people wanted to evoke or employ in “An Untitled Love,” or how those themes find their way in everyday life and the experiences and struggles that people might’ve been going through in the present.

Jo Reed: “An Untitled Love” is filled with joy as it celebrates black culture, black community, self-love, and it was created during a time of heightened awareness of the long injustices endured by black people. But you had been looking at that for years, and you chose at that moment to focus on something else and which is the joy that exists in black communities as well.

Kyle Abraham: Yes.  That is very true.  I think-- I don’t know if it’s just where I’m at or what’s going on but I want us to feel celebrated.  I think it’s just as empowering or it’s just as much an act of activism to find ways in which I can uplift us and celebrate us.  It is still just as important for a lot of people to wake up to the injustices that we face or make works that show a body on the ground as a way of just addressing what’s happening all too often, but at the same time we also need to feel uplifted and we need to make sure that not only our youth but also our seniors can feel loved on and celebrated and find hope because that is so important for all of us, for all people, but especially those of us who have felt discouraged, disenfranchised for way too long.

Jo Reed: We’ve talked about a lot.  What is the most demanding part of your work?

Kyle Abraham: You know, <laughs> if I’m super open and honest, which I hope I’ve been throughout this call...

<laughter>

Kyle Abraham: I think I’d say it’s really the personal toll of things.  I do lead a very lonely life.  You know, I live a bit of a bicoastal life teaching-- currently teaching at USC in the Glorya Kaufman School for several weeks out of the year, and other than that I’m with the company, with A.I.M, my company, or I’m doing commission work, and it can be hard to find not only friendships that can keep getting deeper but also establish, create, like, romantic <laughs> relationships, because it’s hard to go into a, you know, a first or second date and say to someone, “Oh, yeah, I live here part of the year, and I travel most of the year.”  It’s hard to say that to someone and know that they’re still going to be interested, and it’s hard with friends to be in and out of town and then pick up a conversation or get deep in a way with something, leave for six months, and then think that you’re going to continue to be invited to all the things, even as simple as a dinner.  So that’s definitely my biggest challenge for sure.

Jo Reed: And what’s the most joyful?

Kyle Abraham: Oh. <laughs> Thanks.  That’s what I should be focusing on.

<laughter>

Jo Reed: I thought I’d end with that one as opposed to demanding.

Kyle Abraham: Yeah.

<laughter>

Kyle Abraham: I appreciate it.  I appreciate it.  My therapist thanks you too.

<laughter>

Kyle Abraham: Hm.  Honestly, it’s probably so many things.  I had a really exciting call just before this one with Judy Hussie-Taylor at Danspace Project just thinking about ideas around programming and curation and thinking in a way that  goes beyond a stage.  Of course, I love thinking about all of the aspects of what we can put on a stage and I definitely love that.  I also love, I just came from the APAP conference in New York just this last week where we’re sharing work in some cases for the very first time.  We were presenting one of our new works, “Motor Over,” a work that I made during the kind of earlier stages of pandemic, and I realized as the audience is watching it, I was like, “No one’s ever seen this live before.”

<laughter>

Kyle Abraham: “This is the first time.  Oh, my God.”  So seeing that exchange is really beautiful.  Teaching.  I mean, I can be the biggest geek in the studio when I get an opportunity to teach because I love seeing what can happen in real-time and I love-- you know, humbly speaking, I love the reciprocity that you can get with students because they’re, like, just honest and thankful for the investment that hopefully all teachers are giving them. I see the dedication from faculty to students and I love that, and I love getting to know students and know how I can kind of in some ways be a matchmaker for them with jobs on the outside or just help them find their way.  Yeah, I’d definitely say teaching in particular is one of them, and I could say the camaraderie that can exist in the studio with my dancers as well, just going in and like just having a moment where we can in the studio play, laugh, cry, dance, and when I say dance I don’t even mean the five, six, seven, eight.  Not like I count, but... <laughs> Not in the steps but in the way that is honest and communal and connects to my background and origins in social dance.

Jo Reed: And then finally, what’s next?  What’s next for you?  What can we look forward to?

Kyle Abraham: Zoiks.

<laughter>

Kyle Abraham: There’s just so much a’brewing.  A.I.M goes back on tour. They’re on tour pretty much all throughout the year, but we’re getting ready for a new season that-- we’ll be going up to The Joyce Theater in April, but there’s several tours that happen before that.  A large West Coast tour. And then international touring that will happen over the summer.  There’s lots of new commissions that we have in the works for other choreographers to come and work with the company, which is something I started in 2018, and I’m really happy to be too, to kind of think about bringing in artists, some cases artists from a generation younger than mine and in other cases maybe the same generation.  In other cases bringing in some of my elders to make work and/or restage works that audiences need to see that maybe haven’t seen in, you know, 20, 30 years, so all those things are happening and I’m trying to wrap my head around some of the next works for me to be making for 2024 and beyond.  Just putting some of that together in a way that I can’t announce yet. <laughs>

Jo Reed: Okay.

<laughter>

Jo Reed: Well, Kyle, thank you.  Thank you for giving me your time.  Thank you for the wonderful work that you do.

Kyle Abraham: Oh, thank you.  Thank you so much, and thanks for seeing everything and like really seeing it, like, beyond the stage, really kind of seeing where my heart is.  So thank you.

Jo Reed: Ah, thank you.

That was choreographer and founder and artistic director of the company A.I.M. Kyle Abraham—you can keep up with Kyle and the company,and learn more about the dances and find out where they are performing at AIMbykyleabraham.org. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. We’d love to know your thoughts—email us at artworkspod@arts.gov. And follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple, it helps people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.