Give Artists a Home
Kyle Abraham joined the World Arts and Cultures/Dance faculty in 2016. Abraham’s choreography draws on social politics and personal history to create original work. Abraham’s honors include the Doris Duke Artist Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, a USA Ford Fellowship, a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, a Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance, a Princess Grace Award, and OUT Magazine called Abraham the “best and brightest creative talent to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama.”
Kyle Abraham
Image: Tatiana Willis"Writing this in what feels like the ashes of our arts industry, what does the plea "Give artists a home" even mean? I recently spoke to a few colleagues who have created some form of artistic home. Their diverse experiences range from having a connection to an arts community to actively putting money into people or brick-and-mortar buildings. Each artist's vision reflects different realities, yet they have all been able to expand their practice and fuel a more viable future...
Choreographer Kyle Abraham is a potent example of what large-scale, individual artist funding can do to nourish an ecosystem. Rather than buying a personal home for himself with the support he received between 2012 and 2016 (including, among others, the MacArthur "genius" grant and the Live Arts RCA), he began building a kind of home in the form of steady work and health care for his dancers. A.I.M now employs a company of eight, plus four staff members, for 52 weeks a year with vacation. A.I.M dancers have a place to grow, mature, thrive, fail, get sick or injured, and still have a job.
It wasn't always like this for Abraham. "There was a time when I was on food stamps," he says, where, during residency, he would use his food stamp allotment to pay for the company's meals.
Abraham recognizes that his journey is unique in this era when most artistic directors have purposefully avoided the traditional company model, for fear of not being able to successfully navigate the financial and administrative strains. Even with all his success, he is clear, however, that A.I.M doesn't replace "home" or "family" in the deeper sense. "The more established a company like mine becomes, the more separate I am from a sense of family.""— Kimberly Bartosik, Dec. 8, 2020
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Dance website.
Read more about Kyle Abraham.
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