The only dance that was new to me was “The Gettin,” which closed the show. This was the most pointed political piece on the program. The unsettling set designs by Glenn Ligon featured menacing, blotchy figures, segregationist Apartheid signage, and mugshot photos given a Warhol treatment (embellished with neon hues and polka dots). Similarly, the video clips by Dan Scully ranged from Black people playing guitar and stirring grains to footage of Eric Garner’s horrific strangling. Abraham set all this to Robert Glasper’s reimagining of We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, which was vividly played at the back of the stage by musicians Otis Brown III, Luther Allison, Liany Matero, and vocalist Charenee Wade. Abraham kept his cast of 7 offstage for the first number, a plaintive a cappella turn from Wade, but they flooded the stage to the rousing drum piece that followed, clad in Civil Rights era garb by Karen Young.  

Abraham’s ability to evoke musical texture through steps is uncanny. I loved an angry balloté refrain. This ballet step is most often done liltingly, as in the happy-go-lucky opening of “Giselle.” In “The Gettin,” Abraham made it rageful. The women in the cast aggressively tossed out their legs to snare drum runs, making their feet into electrified daggers even though they were clad in dainty bobby socks and jazz shoes. Abraham also employed lots of running in circles, as in his large-scale Park Ave Armory work last year: “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful.” But here, he often incorporated the runner’s lunge starting pose too, which added tense anticipation. Throughout, he deftly approximated Roach’s instrumentation through movement. The lingering reverb of cymbal hits was paired with bursting chassés en tournant en l’air; the sound and the step simultaneously gave the impression of a firework hanging in the air as it slowly dissipated.