Kyle Abraham

Kyle Abraham (Founder and Artistic Director, He/Him) is a choreographer, dancer, and curator, widely celebrated as a visionary voice in American contemporary dance. As the Founder and Artistic Director of Kyle Abraham Dance Vanguard, a company recognized as “one of the most consistently excellent troupes working today” by The New York Times, his work embraces the richness of lived experience while honoring the communities that shaped him. 

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Abraham trained at Civic Light Opera Academy and the Creative and Performing Arts High School before earning a BFA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He later received an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Washington Jefferson College and in 2026, he received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from his alma mater SUNY Purchase.

Abraham has premiered work to acclaim for decades, with Out magazine calling him “best and brightest creative talent to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama.” He is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship (2026), the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2013), the Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award (2016), the Princess Grace Foundation-USA Statue Award (2018), and the Dance Magazine Award (2022). His choreography for Are You in Your Feelings earned a National Dance Award for Best Modern Choreography (2024), while An Untitled Love received nominations for the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production (2025), the inaugural Rose Prize for International Dance (2025), and the National Dance Award for Best Modern Choreography (2026). He has been profiled in Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Kinfolk, Vogue, and British Vogue, among many other publications. 

In addition to performing and developing new works for his company, Abraham has been commissioned by some of the world’s most prestigious companies, producing several works for American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the National Ballet of Cuba, New York City Ballet, Paul Taylor Dance Company, and the Royal Ballet. Building upon his longstanding collaborations with Misty Copeland, he most recently choreographed Copeland in Cynthia Erivo’s short-form film No Good Deed in promotion of Wicked: For Good. 

A dedicated educator and cultural leader, Abraham has served as the Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Professor in Dance at USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance and as a visiting professor at UCLA's World Arts and Cultures/Dance. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has contributed to advisory and leadership initiatives with Lincoln Center, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Prada Group, and Rebuild Foundation. In 2020, Abraham served as the first-ever guest editor for Dance Magazine. 

As a guest curator for the Lincoln Center's inaugural Contemporary Dance Festival in 2026, Abraham furthered his work to expand the impact of contemporary dance by blending formal experimentation with cultural resonance. As Vogue noted, he brings “an avant-garde aesthetic, an original and politically minded downtown sensibility that doesn’t distinguish between genres but freely draws on a vocabulary that is as much Merce [Cunningham] and Martha [Graham] as it is Eadweard Muybridge and Michael Jackson.”

Instagram: @kyle_abraham_original_recipe