The Watershed (2014)

The Watershed reflects on the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid in South Africa. Artistic Director Kyle Abraham muses, "What are the gains and losses we’ve had? How are we viewing those gains and losses and what is the perspective on them, especially as Americans?"

Abraham began working on The Watershed after a visit to the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, South Africa. While there, he became fixated on the power of perception, and the ways that the 13-year-old Pieterson’s death in an anti-Apartheid protest shines a spotlight on questions of personal choice and collective rights in the struggle for freedom.

The Watershed asks the audience to both reflect on the past and to consider where we are today: What are the gains and losses we’ve had? How are we viewing those gains and losses and what is the perspective on them, especially as Americans? For Michael Brown, Tyler Clementi, Eric Garner, Islan Nettles, and the countless other faceless and nameless women and men facing violence and discrimination, these questions still have terrible resonance.

“Everyone has some version of a story of oppression in some way, shape or form so the work is not meant to isolate,” Abraham said in an interview for Out Magazine. It is also “heading toward hopeful.”

For the sets of The Watershed, Abraham collaborated with visual artist Glenn Ligon. "He’s such a brilliant person," Abraham says. "When Glenn’s in the space with us, he’ll give me feedback or a historical reference on dance or the music I’m playing with. He has such a working knowledge of our history."

The Watershed was created to live in a skin well aware of the cyclical hardships of our history, and the very present fear of an unknowable future.