Rachel’s blog @ View Rachel @ Juilliard Dance | Published: August 20, 2013 Category: profilePillowNotes by Rachel Straus The PillowNotes series comprises essays commissioned from our Scholars-in-Residence and others to provide audiences with a broader context for viewing dance. Like the cinematically abrupt scene changes in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, Kyle Abraham’s shifting dance portals in Pavement foster a dreamlike landscape. In his newest work, Abraham employs paradoxical moods […] Published: August 15, 2010 Category: profilePILLOWNOTES by Rachel Straus The PillowNotes series comprises essays commissioned from our Scholars-in-Residence to provide audiences with a broader context for viewing dance. For someone so attuned to others’ inner lives, it was surprising to hear Kyle Abraham say, in a recent interview, “I don’t like to show my emotions on a social level.” But […] Published: June 1, 2010 Category: profileBy Rachel Straus It’s not enough to describe the work of choreographer Kyle Abraham as possessing chameleon charms. The 32-year-old dancer’s ability to instantaneously channel a hip-hop gangsta’s bravado, a cross dresser’s hyper-femininity, and an elderly person’s fragility feels real, as though he is these people. Abraham’s emotional identification with these characters gives […] Published: January 1, 2007 Category: profileBy Rachel Straus American friends refer to her as Pong. And at 5’2″ this Taiwanese-born dancer, who performs with American Repertory Ballet, has a nickname that matches her explosive talent. With a daredevil defiance of gravity and sinuous, snappy movements, Peng-Yu Chen is a young artist whose training in ballet, folk dance, and modern […] |