A masterfully chill way to spend an hour or so in the company of some very talented dancers. An Untitled Love is more fine work from A.I.M by Kyle Abraham.
📍King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 Aug 20 – 21
🕖 8:00pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 1 hours 10 minutes
🕺 Choreographer: Kyle Abraham in collaboration with A.I.M
🎵 Music: D’Angelo and the Vanguard
👥 Costume Designers: Karen Young and Kyle Abraham
🎬 Dramaturg: Charlotte Brathwaite
💰 From £16
🎂 Parental Discretion
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilet, Audio Enhancement Assistance Dogs Welcome
A.I.M by Kyle Abraham’s is an invitation to a house party, an ordinary house party that simply happens to be populated by a cadre of extremely talented dancers. The staging keeps it homely, dominated by a large, cosy couch, set on a large rug, attended by a glowing standard lamp. Things aren’t going to get wild at this party, the neighbours aren’t going to get annoyed; they’re probably invited.
The soulful funk of R&B great D’Angelo’s sets the tone, a gently thumping groove mostly suitable for making love by. The overall choreography orbits the sofa, totem of social connectivity, where the guests gather to talk, before breaking out to chat, jest, flirt, or just dance; as you do at a house party.
It’s gorgeously relatable stuff, but the genius is all in the dance, which begins conversations long before a smattering of audible chatter hits the auditorium. Like so many lithe, highly trained bees, guests will bust out a move, or begin moving in concert with each other, before falling back into the beat again to ‘listen’ to the other. There’s some easy comedy in the dance, as well the faux pas of human mating rituals easy to interpret.
The live chatter when it arrives is similar rom-com chit-chat, nothing exceptional; remember this is a normal house party. Jae Neal is the principal clown, prone to drinking too much with unsteadying effect, and unsure if they want to be in a relationship less it cramp their style.
One of the standout sequences of the show’s beginning sees the entire cast moving in delicious slow motion, their interactions minutely observed, every muscle under tremendous control. Neal’s collision with the couch is a masterpiece, a wordlessly hilarious, and technically challenging feat.
A great deal of the dance is conducted towards the left side of the stage however, and this creates a particular issue in a proscenium theatre like the King’s in Edinburgh. Namely the invisibility of some of the action to those seated to the nearer/left-side of the auditorium. Viewed in the round this issue would vanish, but some patrons likely spent a good deal of the evening guessing if they were missing anything.
The dancing and choreography is a wonderful melange of styles, bridging modern, hip hop, and Latin styles to create a muscular, joyful language for the company to share in. No neat symmetries here, but a smoothly complex intersection of bodies, and movement. Actions propagate from one body to another, timings are found, shared, and lost in an organic, and hugely satisfying progression.
There’s only one departure from the easy, living room joy, when the music turns darker, the funk distorted. Radio chatter pollutes the soundscape, and the dancers, one by one, fall to the floor, hands behind their backs. It’s accompanied by the voice of Doc Rivers, coach to the LA Clippers, who memorably spoke of his amazement that the black community continued to love America despite its propensity for shooting and killing them.
The pure dance highlight of the show is appropriately performed to “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”, wherein a blue neon strip separates lovers Catherine Kirk and Martell Ruffin, the former regularly slipping back into the darkness, though always returning to try to beckon the latter into her supporting arms. Perhaps its an elegy on the challenges of forming a stable relationship, the man’s struggle to love himself the greatest obstacle. Stunning is the only word.
Ultimately An Untitled Love isn’t a revolutionary piece of dance theatre, but it is a very good one. If it never quite rises to the heart in your mouth level of dance inspiration, it is a masterfully chill way to spend an hour or so in the company of some very talented people.
(Image Credit: Christopher Duggan)
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