Got GRIT? What's new and what's reworked at Gibney

Nigel Campbell (left) and Brandon Welch
perform in Joanna Kotze's world premiere, Already Ready.
(photo: Scott Shaw)

Invent, reinvent. Configure, reconfigure.

Since forming her Gibney Dance Company in 1991, Gina Gibney has continually re-imagined who and what it could be--from its demographics to the degree of its performers' engagement with the world outside of studios and theaters. And, this week, comes the second round of another programming structure out of the Gibney organization--GRIT (Gibney Repertory Initiative for Tomorrow) which, in effect, gives her five-member ensemble the challenge of working with choreographers other than herself.

The organization describes the program as follows:

Gibney Dance Company’s GRIT series “makes space for the future of dance” by commissioning new works and reimagining signature works by contemporary dance artists. GRIT posits the possibility that the present generation’s work will be recognized and celebrated in live performance by future audiences.

So, if I got this right, part of the mission of the troupe will be to embody and preserve works by other select dance makers. What GRIT mainly sounds like, though, is a way to expand on what Gibney dancers are exposed to and what they can be prepared to tackle in the future--an interesting development.

The opening last night at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center showed GRIT to be very much a work in progress. You wish well for these dancers but, with the distinct exception of Gibney stalwart and Associate Artistic Director Amy Miller, they have not yet opened into the depth of the work--in the case of Joanna Kotze's new Already Ready, potential depth; in the case of Reggie Wilson’s collaged config. Khoum-baye Heah, near-bottomless depths.

They risk looking far more callow and untried than they actually are. And even a secure veteran like Miller--whose every appearance is a master class in how to think about performance, how to perform and how to see performance--often seems to be just keeping up with the surface, basic requirements of the Wilson work.

Devin Oshiro, Brandon Welch, Amy Miller,
Nigel Campbell and Kasandra Cruz
in Reggie Wilson's config. Khoum-baye Heah

Wilson has made many dances for his exciting Fist and Heel Performance Group largely informed by his research into the arts and spiritual cultures and ritual practices of the broad African diaspora and infused with his wit and contemporary, formal inventiveness. (Long ago, he named this wondrous melange "post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dance.”)  It is to be hoped that Wilson's valuable repertory will indeed be available to future makers, scholars, performers and audiences.

Veteran FHPG dancer Paul Hamilton assisted Wilson in setting a medly of elements of PANG (2000), The DEW WET (1997) and Big Brick – A Man’s Piece (2002) on the Gibney troupe. By Hamilton's account, the experience was a generous one on both sides with the Gibney dancers bringing their strength of community, willing to embrace the Wilson aesthetic's formidable physical demands. Physically, those demands are ones of speed and a furious multiplicity of isolations, directions, levels, uses of weight and deployments of the pelvis. So much going on at once, often at full force. Their bodies hit it, but I don't see the whole of each person living it, being in it. I don't get why they're doing what they're doing.

Kotze's Already Ready, she tells us, comes out of desire to meet the demands of the current moment for stepping up--as citizens, as activists, as creative people who care. Are we ready? She believes we are, and that fits in with everything I've ever known about what Gina Gibney wants for her dance artists and for dancers in general. So, here, a good match--at least in terms of aspiration.

What I appreciate about Already Ready is that is does, indeed, seem to be about people ready to play. They bring their noisy feet into the space, and they boldly doodle and squiggle themselves all over it as if they were big, fat crayons. Diverse in racial background and motley in costuming, they're just a bunch of folks making their particular marks in time, bringing what they bring. I don't see a whole lot more going on here, but I do see that, if this is Kotze's ultimate point, it got across.

Performers: Nigel Campbell, Kasandra Cruz, Amy Miller, Devin Oshiro, Brandon Welch

GRIT continues through Saturday with performances tonight at 8pm and Saturday at 5pm and 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

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Gibney Dance celebrates an anniversary...and its home

Alexeya Eyma-Manderson (left) with Nigel Campbell
in a duet from Gina Gibney's Time Remaining (2003)
(photo: Scott Shaw)

Duets mean everything to choreographer Gina Gibney: evolving moments of human drama compressed, anchored, revealed and displayed in her work like new gems. This season, with a program entitled Duet, Gibney celebrates 25 years of dancemaking by overlapping and interweaving duets from her evening-length dances--from 1992's Landings to a preview of coming attractions.

The unique presentation takes advantage of Gibney's command of a sprawl of redesigned space at 280 Broadway, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, opened in 2014 at the site of the former Dance New Amsterdam.

Amy Miller (above) with Natsuki Arai
in a duet from Coming From Quiet (1998)
(photo: Scott Shaw)

The hour-long suite of dances moves performers and audience from a tiny downstairs studio lab to two larger studios and two transitional spaces--Gibney's gallery and a long corridor connecting the familiar Gibney floor plan to the rest of the building and a bank of elevators. Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of a rather fraught ensemble derived from 2013's Dividing Line, a chime suddenly sounded, and an elevator door opened onto the floor. Watching from the far end of the corridor, the audience could clearly see the leading edge of a plastic bag swing out and quickly draw back. Someone inside, spying several barefooted, black-clad bodies scattered around the floor, thought twice about venturing out!

Gibney's scheme for Duets has the flexibility to both allow for and recover from a possibly mood-shattering, if amusing, incident like that. Even the shuttling of audience from place to place can't diffuse the focused atmosphere created by seasoned veterans Natsuki Arai and Amy Miller along with impressive newcomers Nigel Campbell, Alexeya Eyma-Manderson, Devin Oshiro and Brandon Welch. I most enjoyed anything involving Campbell and Eyma-Manderson, two well-matched deities with lightning and intelligence crackling between them. Gibney's intricate, never less than human interactions--whether assertive, volatile, sexy, tender or contemplative--reward men and women with physical strength, range and genuine, one-to-one responsiveness. Duet offers ample opportunity to watch a promising, well-chosen team go to work.

Amy Miller (left) with Brandon Welch
in a preview from a work-in-progress, Folding In
(photo: Scott Shaw)

Duets continues through Saturday, March 26 with performances at 8pm each evening plus a 5pm matinee on Saturday. But don't delay, because ticketing is limited. The availability of chair seating varies from location to location. Dress comfortably for possible standing-room-only or cushion seating and cool temperatures. A complimentary coat check is provided. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

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First home season for the Gibney Dance Company

Amy Miller and Brandon Welch
in The Short-Cut by Hilary Easton
(photo: Alex Escalante)

Choreographer Gina Gibney took a moment to reassure fans that "I'm not going anywhere" as her Gibney Dance Company launched its first downtown home season as a showcase for two other artists. Work by Women, running now at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, is an act of stepping back to help other talented women step forward. The shared program features just two works, neither by Gibney. There's a commissioned premiere from Amy Miller, the company's Associate Artistic Director and its most fascinating dancer, as well as a revival from colleague Hilary Easton.

It plays out in the center's modest and compact Studio C, which I'm coming to prefer to the broad, more complicated space of Gibney's theater. Studio C helps me--and maybe choreographers, too--focus more on the dance matters at hand.

In both works, this compression of space nicely crops and foregrounds the luster and dynamism of Gibney's five-member ensemble--Natsuki Arai, Javier Baca, Jennifer McQuiston Lott, Miller and newcomer Brandon Welch. This is a tight, intuitive crew--Gibney trains for interrelationship--which appears to have folded Welch into its mix with ease.

Peter Swendsen's music opens Miller's Still and Still Moving with somewhat harsh, reverberating string notes that shoot Miller and Welch into the space. Slender and spongey, the dancers twist and bend and oscillate. Miller is her usual articulate, quicksilver self, but Welch is no slouch. A clean, limber mover, he will, on occasion, grip her to his torso and swing her around or catch and hook her to himself by one arm. When Arai, Baca and Lott spill into the space, the group repeatedly clusters then unfurls along discrete patches of space, dipping low then arching high. One notices an interesting detail: connections, hand to hand, and exchanges often performed with the efficiency of circus performers whose lives depend upon that sort of thing, being safe while looking good. Images pass very quickly.

A dancer--Arai, for instance--might slip out a few paces to solo a bit while a trio stands just north of her, as her frame. They've got her back.

Miller's images and energies offer a subtle synesthesia with the visual sense triggering simultaneous experience of the sonic. When the word "synesthesia" popped into my mind, it opened up the entire dance. I started to see how dancers ring themselves like massive church bells, arms pulling their own cables and metal shivering and tolling in wider and wider circles of sound.

Easton's The Short-Cut, an hour-long ensemble piece, premiered at Danspace Project in 2005. In the half-hour excerpt for Gibney, actor Steven Rattazzi reprises his original role as an efficiency expert studying and timing the five busy dancers. Perhaps appropriately, his first subject of analysis is Miller--the sharp flicks of her legs, her twirls and flares, gradually streamlined into a model worker bee's routine. "That's the beauty of efficiency," says Rattazzi. "No one has to think."

"In the past, man came first. In the future, it is the system that must take precedence," Rattazzi declares from writer Helen Schulman's text. For Easton, though, the system seems quite vulnerable to everything human--confusion, orneriness, competition, irrepressible sense of fun. The audience's favorite parts of The Short-Cut happen when things go against plan--an often amusing and rather healthy state of affairs.

Work by Women continues each evening through Saturday at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (entrance at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Gibney dancers in action and advocacy

Gibney Dance Center presented an informal yet, in true Gibney fashion, immaculately organized survey of its Community Action program, last Wednesday morning, in a private introduction to its new lower Manhattan annex at 280 Broadway. Since 2000, choreographer Gina Gibney's organization has partnered with domestic violence shelters in New York City and abroad, connecting women and children survivors with Gibney dancers and trainees who demonstrate restorative, energizing techniques through accessible, playful movement activities. The innovative program will now be headquartered at 280, the former home of Dance New Amsterdam, across from City Hall.

"Dancers are aware and want to be involved in community well-being but are underutilized," said Community Action Manager, Yasemin Ozumerzifon, whose background includes training in both ballet and developmental psychology.

Dedicated to fostering self-care, self-expression and a renewed sense of agency, Community Action has offered 500 free workshops per year. It now includes in-school presentations for teenagers around violence in dating. Viewing dancers' choreographed duets, students observe many telling differences between healthy and unhealthy behavior in relationships.

For further information on GDC's Community Action workshops, advocacy and training, click here. Also see my October 2013 interview with Ozumerzifon and Amy Miller, Gibney dancer and Associate Artistic Director, here.

Gina Gibney premieres "Dividing Line"

Two Gibney dancers: Amy Miller (l) and Natsuki Arai
(photo by Julieta Cervantes)

In the dance world, we're now so used to thinking of Gina Gibney as the force behind the Union Square's bustling, multi-studio Gibney Dance Center, that it's possible to forget how carefully she tends her own art. Dividing Line--her first new piece in a few years, now at Florence Gould Hall--serves as a reminder of her appetite for making. Her long-running collaboration with two distinguished artists--composer Son Lux (aka Ryan Lott) and lighting designer Kathy Kaufmann--continues to be intuitive and fruitful. And Gibney Dance, her evolving ensemble--now a sextet with equal numbers of women and men--renders her formal ideas with discipline and stamina.

Dividing Line, therefore, makes its mark. With this hour-plus work, Gibney roars back onto her stage, and her claim and ferver are best represented by one dancer in particular--Amy Miller. To acknowledge Miller as soloist, duet partner or the fire-starter within any group moment is not to deny anyone else's contribution to the work. Instead, I want to recognize Miller now for embodying the place towards which Gibney Dance is heading.

Amy Miller
(photo courtesy of Amy Miller)

The line initially established at the front of the stage by all six dancers (Natsuki Arai, Javier Baca, Jake Bone, Zachary Leigh Denison, Jennifer McQuiston Lott and Miller), and re-established at work's end, tells us to pay attention. Something special and heightened will happen here in the space between two clear marks in time. And it does. The line gives way to a space churning with the transformative energy of wind, water and human pulse. Son Lux's string quartet, performed live by the thrilling American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), contains lots and lots of lines that divide like blades swooshing and slashing through air. Gibney and her dancers, with precision of form and timing, meet the composer and his musicians edge for edge.




None edgier than Miller, though. When this dancer moves, she's positively multidimensional, her effort and her boyish pixy persona making the eccentricities of the movement pop. That's what Gibney needs and may one day lead her team to achieve: dancing that brings out the mix of confidence, strangeness and rigor in her aesthetic.

With costumes by David C. Woolard

American Contemporary Music Ensemble includes artistic director Clarice Jensen (cello), Caleb Burhans (viola, substituting for Caitlin Lynch on opening night), Ben Russell (violin) and Caroline Shaw (violin).

Dividing Line continues tonight and tomorrow evening with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Florence Gould Hall
French Institute Alliance Française
55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Gibney Dance Center takes action for domestic violence awareness

GIBNEY DANCE COMMUNITY ACTION

OCTOBER IS 
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AWARENESS MONTH!

In observance of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Gibney Dance Community Action will host a roster of public events throughout this month, beginning next Monday, October 7. See the schedule at the bottom of this post.

Amy Miller

Yasemin Ozumerzifon

Amy Miller (Gibney Dance Associate Artistic Director and company member) and Yasemin Ozumerzifon (Gibney Dance Community Action Manager) recently chatted with me about the Gibney Dance Community Action, a program initiated in 1999 by Executive/Artistic Director and choreographer Gina Gibney. Miller and Ozumerzifon spoke about the program's mission and methods as well as sharing their personal experiences of working with women and children survivors in New York City’s domestic violence shelters.

*****

Yaa Asantewaa: Why does a dance organization care about domestic violence and domestic violence awareness?

Miller: Gina talks a lot about what domestic violence survivors need. They've had their sense of choice robbed from them. Oftentimes, a sense of self-expression has been buried away. Dancers and dancing bring that all together: it's all about self-expression, creativity, working with others and making choices. The two fit together very beautifully. We're bringing tools and prompts and asking them to creatively problem-solve--which is how a lot of choreographers work these days, with physical tasks, using more creative input as a way of developing movement. That's very similar to the model that we're using with the women, where they have a sense of ownership. Everyone is facilitating the workshop. It's not a leader and followers.

Yaa Asantewaa: Before self-expression, there must be self-knowledge. How does dance help restore a healthy sense of self?

Ozumerzifon: One of the reasons that Gina started this program is that dancers have been trained for a long time to listen to the body-mind connection. They have skills and techniques that they have practiced that should be shared with others to help everyone. Dance is a truly different outlet and leads to self-knowledge. You might be tense and not know that you are; you're not aware of it. But then you breathe and relax.

Yaa Asantewaa: That tension can be held or stored information about experiences and feelings. Do you, workshop facilitators, work with anyone with extensive knowledge about issues that can arise when a person begins to work with the body?

Miller: Yes. Each of the dancers goes through a training session brought together from the Gibney Dance model but also spearheaded by Beth Silverman-Yam, Clinical Director of Sanctuary for Families [a non-profit agency serving survivors of domestic violence]. What is domestic violence? What have the women experienced? What will their reactions be? How can we try to circumvent those reactions through various exercises? What to be aware of. Certain things to steer away from. Certain areas to stay sensitive with, and other areas where we can push forward.

We're not counselors. We're not trained to be therapists or dance therapists in any way. We're given a framework where we can use what we already know, which asks the women to look inside and take a second to focus on how they really feel, and then find ways to express that outward working together in groups. And then we always finish each workshop with a Take Care Card with exercises that the women can take away.

Yaa Asantewaa: Are these one-off workshops? Do you ever do a series with the same group of people?

Miller: We’ve started to work with the women in two-month segments so we would have them over a period of time. But women in the shelters are always shifting. Sometimes the turnover of clients will affect how long we get to work with them. Each workshop lives independently but can also live in an arc of diving in deeper if you have the same women.

Ozumerzifon: We’re currently doing 500 workshops a year. We usually go to each shelter once a week. It gives us an opportunity to build on things.

Yaa Asantewaa: Have you seen women experience breakthroughs as a result of your work?

Miller: I know that when I walk into a workshop, there are usually arms crossed. The body language is definitely slightly closed. They have no idea of what to expect or what's expected of them. Many times, they don't know the other women in the shelter. There's a sense of resistance in the beginning but, by the end of it, there's a lot of laughter and eye contact. They've opened themselves up a little bit, and there's a huge shift in the dynamic feeling of the group. They're in these shelters trying to find a job, find housing, trying to figure out what's next, and there's a lot of stress around that. This is an hour to do a little yoga, laugh, find out the name of the person who lives besides you.

Yaa Asantewaa: In a time when dance artists are struggling just to survive and make work, how does the Gibney organization--which is engaged in making and presenting dance, maintaining a large rehearsal and education center, and doing serious, sustained community work--juggle the formidable demands of each of its various components?

Ozumerzifon: All the three components of Gibney Dance--community work, space, the company--are all strongly bound together. It's bringing the possibility of movement to where it doesn't exist. Having a very strong mission makes it easier, because there's a cohesiveness about it. It comes together very organically.

Yaa Asantewaa: How does it work for you as individuals--as instructors, not just administrators?

Ozumerzifon: For my first experience, I went with Sandra, a survivor and mentor at Sanctuary for Families, who had taken our workshops. She really enjoyed movement and created a dance piece, under Gina's direction, called Here to Tell. We did a workshop in a shelter, and she performed it there. That was my introduction, and it was incredible.

Going into a shelter is interesting. Everything is confidential, anonymous. You have to sign things. It's not like going to a dance studios. But the women loved what we did. We giggled and laughed a lot--not what you would picture. Sandra performed, and the women talked with her about her experience. Very different from any workshop that I've taught in my life. [The methodology] is very firm but flexible and relies on your skills. There's room for growth. Actually doing the workshops complements what I do as an administrator. I should know what it is, particularly when I have to write about it.

Miller: In one workhop, I gave a yoga lunge: front leg bent, the other straight, the Warrior II pose. [She demonstrates this lunging pose with hands strongly jutting out in opposing directions as if pushing things away from the body.] The first time I did it, a few women sat back down: "I don't want to do this!" And they say that, too: "I'm not doing that. It looks too hard." The second time I did it, I said, "Well, why don't we, when we push away, think about something we don't want in our lives anymore?" And this woman jumped up and said, "I'm in this!" And she went into the biggest lunge I've ever seen! Pushed her arms really, really tight and had this awesome look on her face. And I said, "And now, let's come back and pull something toward us that we really want in our lives." In every one of them, you could see that the imagery of it became meaningful. That encapsulates the great part of this work.

One of my favorite parts about it is how grounding this work is for me as an artist. It gets me out of the mirror. It gets me to appreciate embodiment of movement, putting imagery to things, creating a narrative for myself in Gina's work. Even that story I just told--incorporating that idea into my own dancing. That's huge. The focus of this is helping me to direct my own choreography away from aesthetics and towards embodiment and meaning in real ways.

I also enjoy how it brings the Gibney company members together in a real way, too.

Yaa Asantewaa: How so?

I think, in the studio, ego becomes much more a facet of what's happening than we want it to, for different reasons, technical reasons, and to think out of the box in a certain way. This focus helps to let some of that settle down, and we can just see one another as people with different backgrounds and aesthetics--and all the differences are great! All of the different layers are accepted, and you don't have to keep pushing against them as much.

Ozumerzifon: I love the advocacy of this work. One in four women in the US experiences domestic violence. The other day, I was having a conversation with a friend, and I told him the statistics. He said, "That cannot be right," and we looked up a lot of the research. It's interesting how little we talk about it as a society, and how it's seen as more of a personal issue or that it's not our problem. So, I love going out there, doing advocacy and educational events.

We did a Bridal March where we walked from the Bronx to Manhattan [with Sanctuary for Families and various organizations]. People shout back at you: "Oh, yeah!" And you can see something changes. I really enjoy that part of it.

Yaa Asantewaa: In addition to your new workshops for children, how is the program growing?

Ozumerzifon: We have started to train others--dancers, social service providers--in the Gibney model. Last year, we started the intensive Institute for Community Action Training where you bring your own skills and learn about how getting them to where you want to take it next. Also, we're going global. We've done a residency in Montreal, but now we've also done a residency in Istanbul.

Yaa Asantewaa: What message does your special week of wellness events--the yoga and meditation sessions--have for the dance community?

Ozumerzifon: It's important to stop and take care of yourself, take that time for yourself. As dancers, we go, go, go, go, go all the time.

Miller: Taking care of yourself has repercussions for how you treat other people. Valuing your health and your well-being translates to how you interact in the world. We're reminded that, yes, taking care of yourself is not extravagant. It's necessary--for you and for everyone you touch in your life.

Ozumerzifon: A lot of what we do is in the shelters, out of the public eye. So I would encourage anyone who's interested and would like to see a little more of the work to attend one of the Open Studios we have on October 16 and October 21 (see schedule below) where we talk about our program, its history, and hear from a clinical staff member from Sanctuary for Families. We do a demonstration of our workshop. It's all open to the public and free.

Miller: And I'd just add that we're taking it out to Union Square Park with Joe Mangrum, the fabulous artist who does sand mandala installations there. We approached him, and he's going to make one with statistics about domestic violence. We're asking the public to join us, doing a brief call-and-response, improvised activity around that. So, if you're in Union Square Park on October 24, feel free to join in!

OCTOBER EVENTS

All Domestic Violence Awareness Month activities are free and open to the public. All--except the October 24 Union Square event--will take place at:

Gibney Dance Center
890 Broadway, Fifth Floor (between 19th and 20th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Participants can register for and learn more about October’s events by emailing community@gibneydance.org.

October 7-11: Body & Wellness Week

6pm-7pm (Gibney Dance Center, Studio 2)

A series of free wellness activities 

including yoga, meditation and conditioning

October 8: Guess Who's in the Greenroom

11am-2pm (Gibney Dance Center Greenroom)

Maria Bauman, Urban Bush Women

Art, Action, and Equity

Sign up for a 30-minute advice session*

October 16: Open Studio/Community Action

6:30-8:30pm (Gibney Dance Studio 5-2)

Open Studio highlighting 

GDC's ground-breaking Community Action program

October 21: Open Studio/Community Action

6:30-8:30pm (Gibney Dance Studio 5-2)

Open Studio highlighting 

GDC's ground-breaking Community Action program

October 22: Guess Who's in the Greenroom

11am-2pm (Gibney Dance Center Greenroom)

Adrienne Glasser, Experience Wellness Group

Understanding Trauma and the Body 

through Neuroscience, Movement, and Role Play

Sign up for a 30-minute advice session*

October 24: Union Square Advocacy Campaign

2pm-6pm in Union Square Park

Gibney Dance Company interactive public dance

in collaboration with artist Joe Mangrum

*To reserve Greenroom sessions or for further information on these and other Gibney Dance Center programs and resources, click here.

*****

Interviewee bios

Yasemin Ozumerzifon

After completing her primary education at the Royal Academy of Ballet, Yasemin moved to the US where she studied Dance and Psychology at Connecticut College. In order to combine her two passions, she pursued an M.A. at Columbia University in Developmental Psychology with focuses in creativity and human development. Yasemin was a research assistant for a study that evaluated the Guggenheim Museum’s “Learning Through Art” program and apprenticed at the New Victory Theater, where she created School Tool™. Yasemin is proud to be part of Community Action.

Amy Miller

Amy Miller, originally from Ohio, is thrilled to step into her new role as the associate artistic director of Gibney Dance. She is a former member of Heinz Poll’s Ohio Ballet, where she had the privilege of dancing leading roles in works by José Limón, Paul Taylor, Kurt Jooss, Antony Tudor, as well as Lucinda Childs, Laura Dean, Donald Byrd and Alonzo King among many others. She is a founding member and guest choreographer of Cleveland-based GroundWorks DanceTheater. Miller holds a BFA in dance and is also the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for her choreography. In addition to numerous university residencies, her creative work has been seen at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, Mark Morris Dance Center, and Scandinavia House and has been produced at Spoke the Hub, West Fest Dance Festival, the West End Theater’s Soaking WET series, and Women in Motion. In keeping with her artistic priority of constantly developing new collaborations, such composers as the genre-defying Ryan Lott (aka Son Lux), guitarist James Marron, Oberlin College graduate Alex Christie, and Oberlin College professor Peter Swendsen have all worked with Miller on a wide range of musical scoring for dance. An avid teacher as well, Miller has been involved in integrated educational residencies within the Cleveland Public Schools sponsored by Young Audiences, an NEA sponsored intergenerational residency at Cleveland’s Fairhill Center for Aging, as well as summer residencies at Cleveland State University and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Recent performance credits include David Parker and The Bang Group, Collective Body Dance Lab, and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.