Friday, September 21, 2012
Theater Tonight: Great Performances Opens With Kyle Abraham's "Live! The Realest MC" at Vanderbilt's Ingram Hall
Posted by Laura Hutson on Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 5:00 AM
Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion
Where: Vanderbilt's Ingram Hall
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21
In Live! The Realest MC, New York-based dancer Kyle Abraham does the unimaginable — he makes the story of Pinocchio relevant. Reimagining the plight of the puppet as a metaphor for coming out as a gay man in the hip-hop community, Abraham's moves unfold like an urgent, hypnotic and often hilarious fairy tale. Outfitted in a bedazzled Adidas track suit, Abraham will lead his troupe of five dancers across the stage at Vanderbilt's Ingram Hall as the season opener for this year's Great Performances series, and it couldn't be a better choice.
Due to a shift in administrative focus, Great Performances has been cut to less than half the size of last year's lineup. Live! The Realest MC is therefore charged with making a much larger impact on its audience, galvanizing them to get excited about the Great Performances season. From the looks of it, Abraham and his company Abraham.In.Motion are more than up to the task.
"We've tightened our focus," Great Performances director Bridgette Kohnhorst tells the Scene, "and curatorially, we've looked at what we clearly do offer the Nashville public audience that you cannot get every day. That is our contemporary dance, our world music, our edgy theater."
Watch a clip from Live! The Realest MC after the jump.
