In April 1965, Harper’s Bazaar unveiled an edition of the magazine guest-edited by photographer Richard Avedon and dedicated to “the off-beat side of Now.” Borne of a moment of upheaval not unlike the one we’re currently living in, the issue explored the people and ideas that were shaping the era. Sixty years later, we’re marking its anniversary by talking to some of our own era’s most influential figures and faces about the idea of the Now.
The dance work that you see us performing here is called 2 x 4. It’s actually a work that’s choreographed for four dancers, with two baritone saxophonists playing the music, which was composed by Shelley Washington. The kinds of themes that come up in this work have to do with the concept of difference but also shape and support.
The seeds of 2 x 4 were really born when the curator Antwaun Sargent reached out to me last year to be a part of a show that he was doing called “Social Abstraction” at the Gagosian gallery in Beverly Hills. When I looked at some of the artwork that was going to be included, I started getting ideas around movement vocabulary, but even more than that, a certain kind of sound. I was looking at a painting by Devin B. Johnson [Congealed & Stuck, 2024], and it really made me think about the baritone saxophone. I couldn’t tell you why, but there was something about the way he used the color brown and just some of the textures I was seeing that made me think about that kind of guttural sound.
The dance started out as a duet. Then, around the time of the election last fall, I began to think about this idea of support, because I felt like I needed it. I felt like I needed more bodies around me. So I started approaching what was a duet in the form of a quartet. Some of the material you see in this dance explores the idea of a singular figure being in some ways supported and in other ways manipulated by the people around them.
What’s charging me right now is trying to persevere and push myself—and hopefully make people feel seen and loved. There is this beautiful space in the abstraction of what dance can represent that allows people to feel empowered. It can also bring up a lot of questions for people and create the space for them to have fun, laugh, cry, and scream.
I don’t know if it’s a sense of naivete, but I think what represents “now” to me is this idea of hope. We are living in some very dark and scary times, but I have to find hope. I have to be able to get out of bed in the morning and hope that there is something positive, not only that I can put forward in this world but that someone else will be open to receive.
A version of this story appears in the April 2025 issue of Harper’s Bazaar.
Choreography: A.I.M by Kyle Abraham
Music: “Big Talk,” written by Shelley Washington and performed by Shelley Washington and José Antonio Zayas Cabán
Dancers: Jamaal Bowman, Amari Frazier, Mykiah Goree, Alysia Johnson, Faith Joy Mondesire, William Okajima, Morgan Olschewske, Donovan Reed, Keturah Stephen, Gianna Theodore, Olivia Wang
Executive producer: Alexandra Gurvitch; director of photography: Jon Cortizo; associate cinematographer: Jaime Medrano Jr.; associate producer: Sarina Bhutani
