Bebe Miller Company - A History

"What makes Miller's choreography so moving are the sudden moments of mystery...coolly thoughtful yet dispatched with consummate ease."—New York Times

Ohio State’s own Bebe Miller premieres A History, her latest dance theater work, following a series of Wex-sponsored creative residencies with her team of collaborators. Both reflective and forward thinking, A History mines the creative processes Miller has closely developed with dancers Angie Hauser and Darrell Jones and longtime dramaturge Talvin Wilks to generate fresh material for an evening-length duet.

Miller’s art of making is made visible as she delves into the behind-the-scenes methods of construction of past works such as Necessary Beauty (2008), Landing/Place (2005), and the Bessie-winning Verge (2001)—which were also supported by Wexner Center residencies—analyzing how their connective links to opened up new possibilities for metaphorical leaps, imaginative staging, and creative movement ideas. Miller and the dancers reveal the nuanced interpersonal dynamics that inform their joint creative quests, while video by Lily Skove amplifies the impact, juxtaposing the dancers’ live and virtual bodies. As the Washington Post has said, “Bebe Miller is a cartographer of human emotions, mapping the landscape of the passions of her dance with luminous intelligence.”

The premiere of A History is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Bebe Miller: Tracing History, on view downtown at Ohio State's Urban Arts Space from August 23 to September 29. Curated by Jerry Dannemiller of the Wexner Center, this exhibition provides further insight into Miller's trajectory as one of the leading choreographers of her generation and features a new video installation by Maya Ciarrocchi that will tour nationally as a companion piece to A History.

Bebe Miller was the recipient of two major honors recently. Ohio State students named her one of this year’s winners of the Sphinx Award, which recognizes outstanding faculty and staff members who have been role models and inspirations to their students. In addition, Miller was selected as one of first class of 21 Doris Duke Artists, a program that extends direct funding of up to $275,000 to outstanding performing artists. She is in excellent company; the Doris Duke Artists include many other innovators familiar to Wexner Center audiences, among them Anne Bogart (of SITI Company), Young Jean Lee, and Bill Frisell. Congratulations to Bebe Miller for this prestigious recognition of her contributions to our campus community and to the field of dance.

Credits
Bebe Miller Company’s A History was commissioned by the Wexner Center through its Wexner Center Artist Residency Award program and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. A History was also developed with support from Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance.

The creation of A History was made possible with support from The Ohio State University's College of Arts and Sciences Grants for Research and Creative Activity and the Department of Dance, as well as by the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, and the Department of Women’s Studies and their Coca-Cola Critical Difference for Women grant program.

The creation of A History was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the MetLife Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

This presentation of Bebe Miller Company’s A History was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Additional support for Bebe Miller Company has been provided by the Multi-Arts Production Fund, a program of Creative Capital Foundation supported by The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Bebe Miller Company and A History are supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The work’s development was coproduced as part of The Forsythe Company's Motion Bank: TWO Project by Maria Palazzi and Norah Zuniga-Shaw, Advanced Computing Center for Arts and Design at The Ohio State University. Motion Bank is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the Hessian Ministry for Science and the Arts, the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain and Ms. Susanne Klatten.

Funding for A History was also provided by the United States Artists’ USA Projects donation program.