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Bebe Miller, an American dancer and choreographer, is recognized for her innovative and unconventional work that relates back to her personal history and dance training. She has been creating dance for over twenty-five years, and her choreography has been noted for its "mix of virtuosic, athletic speed and the fragile human impulse behind it."

Biography

Early Experiences with Dance

Bebe Miller was born in New York City on September 20, 1950. Raised by her mother, she grew up in the housing projects in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn until 1964. Though it was discouraging to develop a career in theatrical dance in this area, Miller's mother was committed to making sure both of her daughters had music and dance training and that they saw performances available to them in New York City.

Miller began her training in 1954 studying with Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis at the Henry Street Settlement Play House on Manhattan's Lower East Side. It was here that Miller was first instilled with an "aesthetic vision, one that is nearly as important as her experience as an urban African American coming of age in an era of enormous social change in America, particularly in the relationships between races and the sexes." Well-known dancers at the time such as Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, Sandra Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse made appearances at the Henry Street Playhouse. Miller states, "The fact that my first exposure to dance was of the quality of the Nikolais Company, as well its highly abstract nature, rooted me in the basis of modern dance."

Studying Dance

After graduating high school in 1967, Miller began college in pursuit of an art degree at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. There, Miller was exposed to post modern dance and was inspired by Merce Cunningham.

In 1971, she graduated from Earlham College with a degree in art and four years later with a master's in dance from Ohio State University. From 1976 to 1982, Miller moved back to NYC and began dancing with Nina Weiner and Dancers where she developed a "quietly intense, passionate style." The challenge was to "articulate as well as express, and include and discover my own funky individuality as something to codify, expand, and explore."

Miller has taught at many universities and festivals in America as well as internationally in Johannesburg, England, Vienna, and Melbourne.

Bebe Miller Company

She created the Bebe Miller Company in 1984 with "an interest in finding a physical language for the human condition" and "continues a line of exploration of the visceral, unruly edges of heart and psyche that inform our day-to-day progress."

The company has traveled extensively worldwide and has a repertoire of over 30 works with over half with originally commissioned music. Miller finds great enrichment with collaborating with other artists. She has choreographed for many dance companies such as Boston Ballet in 1992, Oregon Ballet Theatre in 1994 and 1997, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, Philadanco, Phoenix Dance of Great Britain, Groupe Experimental de Danse Contemporaine in Martinique, Sbrit Dance Company in Asmara, Eritrea, and the PACT Dance Company of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Works

Miller's first piece, Tune, was created in 1978. She worked with composers, videographers, lighting designers, and writers to create this theatrical but abstract piece. Like many other postmodern choreographers of that time, Miller used components such as costumes, lighting design, and set pieces to further convey the message her piece or "story" was telling. "I needed to tell those stories- [there's] the feeling that it doesn't live unless it's communicated."

Her choreography and movement has been described with words such as corkscrewing, spiraling, and swiveling. These ideas have remained constant through her movement vocabulary and defined her work in its own uniqueness.Fluid dancing is often coinciding with angle gestures of the limbs or a rapid jerk of the pelvis. A visual example of this would be her 1997 piece commissioned by Oregon Ballet Theatre, Roses in a Righteous Garden. Another well-known piece was The Hendrix Project (1991) that was created in response the presidential candidate Michael Dukakis' repudiation of liberalism in the 1990 campaign. The flavor of the choreography as well as Miller's performance was described as "stabbing and slashing the space", "acquired the force of a hellish wheel", and "piercing into the dark."

In recent years, she has investigated with mixtures of text, performance, and visual presentation. These ideas of collaboration can be seen in the Bessie award-winning Landing/Place (2005), Verge (2001), and Going to the Wall (1998). In 1999, Miller, choreographer Ralph Lemon, and filmmaker Isaac Julien completed the award winning collaborative film, Three.

While being a full professor at The Ohio State University, Miller collaborated with the department of dance in producing several digital documentation works, including a DVD-ROM of Going to the Wall, and a CD-ROM of Prey (2000) that accompanies its Labanotation score and DanceCODES, a software template for choreographic documentation.

Awards

She has received many awards throughout her career including four of which were Bessie Awards for performance. She has also received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.