Kyle Abraham is always in motion. The MacArthur Fellow and artistic director of A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham has spent two decades building a body of work that moves between hip-hop and ballet, intimacy and abstraction, the deeply personal and the formally rigorous.

This spring, Abraham is the star of the show at the Plaza, where Van Cleef & Arpels' Spring Is Blooming installation provides the setting. Through May 10, audiences will see two works from Abraham's repertoire performed outdoors, a context that removes the scaffolding of a theater and invites every viewer, from lifelong dance aficionados to passers-by at Rockefeller Center, to lean in.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Rockefeller Center: What does Dance Reflections mean to you?

Kyle Abraham: Dance Reflections, for me, is a really wonderful opportunity for any community to see dance. I love all that the programming brings to the city of New York. I love that we can do this crazy outdoor performance in silence.

RC: What’s your pre-show ritual?

KA: My pre-show ritual can vary a little bit. Usually it entails a little bit of yoga, maybe a little Pilates, and sometimes some rap music. If it’s not that, maybe some sad, depressing songs, just to kind of get into some kind of emo mood, if that’s what the dance is to portray. And then to finish it off, I love a hot shower just before I get on stage. Sometimes I’ve almost missed my queue because I’m coming out of the shower, but I’m warm and I’m ready to go. I love it.

RC: What’s your guilty pleasure outside of dance?

KA: My guilty pleasures outside of dance are probably board games. I’m a board game nerd. And reading a lot of books; it’s hard for me to turn my brain off, so I try and read to fall asleep as best I can.

RC: Who or what has been inspiring you lately?

KA: I’m constantly inspired by Missy Elliot. I love that she has always and will always be her most authentic self, and that’s what I hope to do in my kind of chameleon exploration of self.

RC: Can you describe these two works that you’ve brought to Rockefeller Center for Dance Reflections?

KA: The first duet that we see is called Motor Rover. It was inspired by a Merse Cunningham work called Land Rover. Some of the movement and ideas, in a way, it’s meant to be in conversation with Merse Cunningham’s work; that’s how that work came to be.

The other work, which is a solo, I started making during the pandemic. It had only been viewed virtually up until 2024, when we did it in Paris for an outdoor venue. But this is the first time it’s been seen in New York by any live audience.

RC: Speaking of audiences, what would you want them to take away after seeing this?

KA: Stay curious.

About Dance Reflections

Launched in 2020, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is the Maison's program for supporting contemporary dance. It builds on a relationship with the choreographic arts that traces back to the 1920s, deepened in the late 1940s through the friendship between Claude Arpels and George Balanchine, and continues today through partnerships with companies and institutions across fifteen countries.

The program is organized around three values: creation, transmission, and education. In practice, that means commissioning new choreography, helping institutions present major works internationally, and bringing dance into public spaces where new audiences can encounter it without a ticket or a curtain. Festivals and events unfold in performance halls, exhibition galleries, and public squares, with film screenings, artist forums, and open workshops layered alongside the live programming.

Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels presents Kyle Abraham at Rockefeller Center this spring, staged at the Spring Is Blooming installation on the Plaza through May 10. Free and open to the public. Make a day of it: reserve a terrace table at Jupiter or head up to Top of the Rock before or after the performance.