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Conversations Without Walls: Kyle Abraham & Taylor Stanley

Kyle Abraham by Tatiana Willis. Taylor Stanley by Sasha Arutyunova.

Livestream: Saturday, December 12, 12pm ET

YouTube link will also be sent to registrants on Saturday morning prior to the event, and will be posted on our website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (@DanspaceProject)

Danspace Project Program Director and Associate Curator, Benjamin Akio Kimitch, will be in conversation with Kyle Abraham, choreographer and Artistic Director of his company A.I.M, and Taylor Stanley, Principal Dancer for New York City Ballet, about the development of their collaborative friendship, beginning with the creation of Abraham’s The Runaway (2018) for New York City Ballet to their short film collaboration, Ces noms que nous portons (2020) for Lincoln Center. Footage of Ces noms que nous portons and rehearsal documentation for The Runaway will be screened. They’ll discuss their shared experiences with representation, trust, and advocating for change within dance institutions.

This conversation will explore new dimensions to Danspace’s PLATFORM 2015: Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets, curated by Claudia La Rocco, which examined the overlapping and divergent lineages of George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, and Judson Dance Theater. How are these lineages being embraced, subverted and/or rejected by today’s Black, brown, and queer dance artists?

The CWW digital series are pre-recorded and will be streamed on YouTube and archived on the Danspace Project online Journal. More about Conversations Without Walls

Accessibility: This program will be captioned.

Recently featured in both Kinfolk and O, The Oprah Magazine, 2018 Princess Grace Statue Award recipient and Lincoln Center Education Artist in Residence, Kyle Abraham is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and a 2016 Doris Duke Awardee who began his dance training in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before receiving his BFA from Purchase College and his MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Abraham is in his fifth year as a Visiting Professor in Residence at UCLA and is the Artistic Director of A.I.M, acclaimed NY-based company of dancers from various disciplines and diverse personal backgrounds. In addition to performing and developing new works for A.I.M in 2019, he also choreographed and premiered The Bystander for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Only The Lonely for Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Company and Ash, a new solo work for American Ballet Theater principle, Misty Copeland to rave reviews. In 2011, OUT Magazine labeled Kyle Abraham as the “best and brightest creative talent to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama.” For more information please visit: abrahaminmotion.org

Taylor Stanley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began his dance training at the age of three at The Rock School in Pennsylvania. He attended summer programs at Miami City Ballet in 2006 and 2007 and at the School of American Ballet during the summer of 2008 before enrolling full-time at SAB in the fall of that same year. In September 2009, Stanley became an apprentice with New York City Ballet, and joined the Company as a member of the corps de ballet in September 2010. He was promoted to soloist in February 2013 and to principal dancer in May 2016. Taylor received the Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise in 2009 and was the 2011-2012 recipient of the Janice Levin Award. He performed in NYCB Soloist Troy Schumacher’s BalletCollective from 2010-2015, and has danced in various works by Andrea Miller, Jodi Melnick, Annabelle Lopez-Ochao, Liz Gerring, Pam Tanowitz, Kim Brandstrup, and Christopher Williams. Taylor has also participated in workshops with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater, and Batsheva Dance Company. In 2019, Taylor received a Bessie Award for “Outstanding Performance” in Kyle Abraham’s The Runaway, choreographed for NYCB in 2018. IG: taylor.g.stanley