#bebe miller

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Bebe Miller, Dance is my art. Stories Behind the Art. Columbus Makes Art

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4/21/15 O&A REVIEW: Philadanco- Having Our Say…The Voices of Women Choreographers

4/21/15 O&A REVIEW: Philadanco- Having Our Say…The Voices of Women Choreographers

By Walter Rutledge

Philadanco celebrated the 45th anniversary of the company Friday, April 17 through Sunday, April 19 at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. The program was an homage to the talents of female artists. The concert featured the work of four dance makers Diane McIntyre, Jawale Willa Jo Zollar, Bebe Miller and Dawn Marie Bazemore; and a tribute to performing artist, the late…

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Maree Remalia & Abby Zbikowski (Bebe Miller's Double Plus at Gibney Dance)

Maree Remalia & Abby Zbikowski (Bebe Miller’s Double Plus at Gibney Dance)

Photos by Alex Escalante

Bebe Miller curated the final program for the Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center’s inaugural season at Gibney Dance’s 280 Broadway location last month. This fall, Craig Peterson approached his new role as Gibney’s Director of Programs and Presentation, in which he is responsible for “developing and implementing the curatorial vision” for their black box and studio…

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Globe Trot (50 filmmakers, 23 countries, 1 dance)

A crowd-sourced dance-film on all seven continents. ■ director: Mitchell Rose ■ choreographer: Bebe Miller ■ composer: William Goodrum

Mitchell Rose Films

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Excited to have Bebe Miller and Company on campus! Get a look into the company's process tonight during their free Show & Tell in Schaeffer Theater at 7:30pm. 

Photo: Julieta Cervantes, Bebe Miller Company

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Bebe Miller Company: A History

Haoqing Shen (Amber)

I made a mistake when I went to watch the performance that night, which makes the dancing became an inscrutable, unreadable work of art for me in the following thirty minutes from the beginning – almost half of the performance! If I could turn back the clock and am given another chance to watch this performance again, I would make some preparation and get a general idea of the dancing before I go. If that’s the case, I wouldn’t have wasted the valuable thirty minutes! This is a shame of this experience but on the other side, such a shame successfully turn this experience into an unforgettable one.

This is my first time to watch a dancing performance in a theater and this is the first dance I have seen which combined with so many digital media installations. After I took my seat, the first thing that came into my eyes was a screen on the left side of the stage. Several minutes later, the screen began to show a video, which surprised me a little and Bing even whispered in my ear jokingly ”We are not going to watch a dancing on the screen, are we?” I can’t remember what was in the video clearly but one sentence really left me a deep impression since it was repeated again and again “remembering remembering.” In fact since I didn’t know anything about the performance, I was expecting this dancing to show or relate a period of real world history. However I knew that guess was not a nice one as soon as the video began to display on the screen. There was no time for me to form a new conjecture. Shortly after that Darrel made his appearance with a piece of dance, without music. While gasping in admiration at the superb dancing skill and extraordinary physical quality, I was completely bewildered of what he is conveying or trying to display. And then Darrel stopped his movement. Angie came on the stage in the same way. They put on the old fashioned headphones, repeating the words they heard fast and loudly. The screen began to show another clip in which Angie was wandering along a small path in the field and there is a log cabin…I can’t remember what was going on exactly but I can only tell the only feeling I got during the following thirty minutes: confused.

While as more clips was showed on the screen I was able to grasp the general idea of the performance. This show, named A History, is aimed at displaying the preeminent choreographer Bebe Miller’s dance-making history and the experience of making dance with these two gorgeous dancers: Darrel and Angie. I suddenly realized what were they doing, talking, and listening to. That was the displaying of the dance making process from the internal. I can still remember the clip in which they were lying on a bed, with their headphones on. And then Angie exploded into her speedy monologues (to be honest I failed to catch her words) and began to jump on the bed, Darrel responded by simply rolling of the bed and walked away. This was an interesting scene and I speculated that might be a time when they are struggling to reach an agreement. Their had rich interactions both in the videos and on the stage, at last as is said in the video, their bodies became one and their performance was fused together gradually.

At about the fifty minutes, the music and rhythm was getting stronger and stronger, Angie and Darrel were doing fierce movements and so do they on the screen. I regarded this as the climax of the show and also one of the best moments. The video rang alongside the dancers, but one is the history and the other is at the present, which lead me to look back the past time of my life and sigh with feeling “ Ah, I am eventually here.” This maybe the most precious thing of a performance that it makes you ponder over something.

On the whole this was a memorable experience with certain gain. The ingenious conception, use of the flexibility of digital media, the amazing dancing undoubtly made A History a fantastic dancing show.

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Art of Bebe Miller

Mengyue Zhou

  This dance A History narrates the story of Miller’s decade-long collaboration with dancers Angie Hauser and Darrell Jones. This dance combined dancer’s movement video music and live spoken word from conversations interviews and writings of the collaborations. During the dance, the most attractive and interesting part for me was the two dancers wear headphones and began repeat the words from the headphones. They designed an art effect that they didn’t speak together but when first person spoke about 2 seconds the other person began to speak. This would cause an echo and when the audience heard, they would feel the whole stage was enlarged and the performance would be more strong and powerful. With technological seams showing, A History teaches us that looking backward and forward are two sides of the same coins. From the beginning the dancer was jumping on the bed with headphone and the men dancer was sleeping on the bed with headphone. The totally different things happened on one bed, this reminds me that may be a lot of things happened past would different because when you stand on the different side you will see the opposite effects of the same thing. Then the two dancers walked out of the video and come to the real stage. During the whole dance a table is the prop they used very often. Sometimes they would dance on the table or under the table, mostly when the men dancer danced on the table it seems like carnival and two dancers both speak a lot and wear a smile face with excitement. At that time the music became faster to coordinate the fast movement of dancers. When the men dancer hide himself under the table, the women dancer seems like she was trying to find him and let her stay away from the hopeless situation. These actions make me deeply understand the meaning of this dance that history is a lot of things happened in the past and maybe these things make people happy and worth to memory and something make people very sad even depressed but the same they were still worth to be remembered.

   From the first, I doubted the aim of this dance because the two dancers were just move their body randomly even they didn’t follow the music and did not express any beauty from their dance. But later I know this duet’s gestural language is marked by unusual and fascinating points of physical contract and long stretches of physical separateness. Sometimes they reinforced their movements and sometimes they showed to the audience a feeling of soft touch. But I was still confused about why they did those strange movements like they were torturing themselves by putting their arms forward but let their legs behind.

   After seeing this dance I have to say I accept a baptism of art and kind of motivated by the way of express story and feeling. The feeling to appreciate a brand new performance makes me so excited and I think I am willing to do that again.

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The mysterious Duet: A History

Richie (Ruiqi) Shi

       It is my first time to watch a dance like that, with conveying something that is not very concrete. For me, dancing is a relaxation, the way to release the inner to the outside. However, after that night things changed. Dance is no longer a way to let myself relax, but also a way to listen to myself, a way to find myself. A History used dance to illustrate how past experiences and ideas of people will lead them forward in the future.

   Actually, I was quite confused by their dance at first. I don’t know what will dancer perform in the next step and what do they represent when they dancing in that somehow weird way. I was, in fact, astonished by Darrell’s overstate twist of his body. At first, I was wondering if the dance would illustrate how a history of people will be. So I was looking forward for some detailed and easy to follow dance scene like I watched Romeo and Juliet last time. Things are very exceptional this time, there’s no scene at all I think. They are showing their past dance practice or simply showing their past body movements, trying to tell us how their past twist, past sway and past jump will lead their dance to another stage and maybe something else. It’s really hard to figure out what they are trying to convey, but I planned to watch every motions of them and try my best to find out the explanation of their dance: A History was a mystery for me, at least for now.

       The dance don’t have discipline, which made it hard to find if there is a story line; However, as the dance going on, it became to have some emotional climax in the choreography, and finally I realized something is going on. When hearing the duet from Angie and Darrel, I was thinking maybe there’s a story between them, I guess they might have relationship, some kind of relationship. Maybe one of them helped the other, or maybe they danced with each other all the time so they have been through a lot. Watching the video showing that women walking in the forest and slowly entered into the cabin, I felt like that must be something illustrating about the past, since the effect of the video truly provide people with the strong feeling of remembering the past. Then as more and more word expression shown on the screen, it became clearer that they are telling about their past and they are remembering their remembering. The steps they moved in the past, the jumps they made in the past decades, and the physical or emotional pain they suffered during last ten years. Every memory creates the person they are now, it is the past made us, and it is a history brings the present.

       A history is people’s experience, the dance let audiences think of our past and imagine how our history will bring us into the future. I admire Bebe Miller, this great choreographer. She is the woman of substance, she using the way of looking back at the past decade to ask question about people, relationships, our culture and us. Every motion Angie and Darrell made are infused with spirit, letting people think of their past dance made the person they are now; every words involved during the show, made people to remember their own past retrospect. Those motions and words are spiritual, but functional.

       It is interesting to observe how the dancer using their headset to expose the collision of their internal processes. As they listen to the headset, there’s some kind of magic to let them thinking of the past, and let them voluntarily telling their past stories. It is really creative to use this way to expose the past, quite direct and brave. Not to mention the headset, the performance coupled with some other media installations like the screen, for showing the video of their dance tracks. The women wandering in the forest and the women on the stage somehow tells me how size will function in our life. The dance mixed up with the digital media, which can be the most flexible dance I have ever watched. With that, Bebe Miller successfully used the dance to make that whole performance changed from a archive into a form of artifact and finally to a artwork.

        In general, it is really interesting and lucky to watch a dance performance like that, It allows me to expand my understanding and imagination. Things are not what you see, things are what you can imagine.   

Here, I want to share a link of some pictures of the dancers involved in A HISTORY.

http://ahistoryinstallation.wordpress.com/