An Untitled Love Edinburgh International Festival 2022 King's Theatre 21 August Review
An Untitled Love, choreographer Kyle Abraham's newest full-length work, is at The King’s Theatre as part of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival and if you are looking for stylish and apparently effortless contemporary dance set to a wonderful R & B score, then this is one show not to miss.
Love has many faces, some good, some bad, but for the most part, often love, whatever face it shows to us, is an experience that changes us in one way or another. There are many facets of “love” explored in this production and one of those is Kyle Abraham's emotional response to hearing D'Angelo’s debut album “Brown Sugar” in 1995. This is significant, because D'Angelo’s music as used here as much more than simply a soundtrack to the dancers on stage, it is the emotional landscape which they step into for “An Untitled Love”.
This production is a hybrid of performance disciplines. On the one hand, we have some beautiful choreography full of effortless grace and style set against an equally stylish soundscape, but on the other hand, this is also for the most part, expressive non-spoken drama. Here our dancers need to have not only very good technical skills as dancers, but also expressive skills, mostly though their body movements as dramatic performers, and all combine both fluently.
What is “Love” in the end though? This work raises many questions as we explore the love of personal relationships, the love of a culture, the love of an identity, the love of a country. In all of these explorations, all of these journeys, we find that sometimes love is returned in equal or more amounts, but in other aspects, is that love returned at all?
You can take this production at many levels. Superficially there is simply the dance performance set to the music of D'Angelo, and the two are a seamless collaboration. Look a little bit beneath the surface of the music and the dance and there are other aspects of “An Untitled Love” that have much more to say if we are willing to open our ears and our hearts to listen.
Review by Tom King © 2022
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Love has many faces, some good, some bad, but for the most part, often love, whatever face it shows to us, is an experience that changes us in one way or another. There are many facets of “love” explored in this production and one of those is Kyle Abraham's emotional response to hearing D'Angelo’s debut album “Brown Sugar” in 1995. This is significant, because D'Angelo’s music as used here as much more than simply a soundtrack to the dancers on stage, it is the emotional landscape which they step into for “An Untitled Love”.
This production is a hybrid of performance disciplines. On the one hand, we have some beautiful choreography full of effortless grace and style set against an equally stylish soundscape, but on the other hand, this is also for the most part, expressive non-spoken drama. Here our dancers need to have not only very good technical skills as dancers, but also expressive skills, mostly though their body movements as dramatic performers, and all combine both fluently.
What is “Love” in the end though? This work raises many questions as we explore the love of personal relationships, the love of a culture, the love of an identity, the love of a country. In all of these explorations, all of these journeys, we find that sometimes love is returned in equal or more amounts, but in other aspects, is that love returned at all?
You can take this production at many levels. Superficially there is simply the dance performance set to the music of D'Angelo, and the two are a seamless collaboration. Look a little bit beneath the surface of the music and the dance and there are other aspects of “An Untitled Love” that have much more to say if we are willing to open our ears and our hearts to listen.
Review by Tom King © 2022
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com