25 to Watch 2018: MK Abadoo

MK Abadoo is an unapologetic activist. The dances she creates speak her truth to power. Her choreography offers a socially conscious take on torn-from-the-headlines issues of racial, social and gender equity.

Drawn to community-based work, Abadoo fuses postmodernist aesthetics with fleet-footed and full-bodied West African forms—she spent a Fulbright year in Ghana—and the nonchalant swagger of funk. Her 2015 work Octavia’s Brood: Riding the Ox Home is inspired by science-fiction writer Octavia Butler’s work and vignettes from the Underground Railroad, toggling between an Afro-futurist view of the U.S. and the searing history of Harriet Tubman. When Abadoo and her dancers stop short, caught by swaths of brown fabric tugging them ceaselessly back, they’re trapped in an extension of their skin as Akua Allrich croons “My skin is black.” Abadoo’s message: The struggle against racism remains real, visceral and unvarnished, and she’s ready to confront the issue head-on.

Find out who else made Dance Magazine‘s “25 to Watch” list this year.