Artist Talks:
Conversations + Screenings
This series is born from my love of art, artists, process, being in a theater with other people and movie theaters. Rather than shut down during this unknown, turbulent, scary time, this is our offering, deepening relationships between artists and their community by presenting performances that aren’t touring or have been lost.
The Artist Talks are like going to a movie, being in the audience of a dance performance, and grabbing a drink with the artist all in one. It is a chance to learn more about how an artist thinks and see work(s) that aren’t available to experience otherwise in the company of others. It is a gathering in community more reflective of the experience of a live performance than watching dance footage on a phone or computer alone.
The series creates opportunities for artists to show their work - and for audiences to experience it - using resources that already exist: high quality performance footage and the artists themselves.
As it grows, these talks will be offered around the country as a portable way to present work and artists that haven’t been seen in an area, as well as bring artists to areas that may not have the resources to present a live performance of their work. They are also opportunities to introduce regional artists who haven't toured to other cities to a new place.
Join us to experience dance together, talk about it with the artists, and eat fun snacks.
The series kicks off with a conversation + screening with Bebe Miller + Zoe Scofield on Friday, May 22nd at 7:15pm.
More info below!
Free and reduced access supported by:
Join us for a screening of Bebe and Zoe’s selected work and conversation between Bebe, Zoe, and you (and popcorn and candy and drinks, of course!). See work from their archives, hear about their processes, how their work was made and what they think about it now. This is an opportunity to see and hear about work not available otherwise!
How it began
Zoe Scofield
I was first introduced to Bebe’s work when I was about 12 or 13 years old and lived in Gainesville GA (read: small town), my dad drove me two hours to see The Hendrix Project in Athens GA. My mom took modern dance classes with José Limón and Martha Graham (!!) when she was a student at Connecticut College and my dad loved Jimi Hendrix, but I was clueless. Up to that point my knowledge of dance was my weekly ballet classes with a capital B and the PBS Great Performances videos of Barishnykov, Martha Graham and NYCB that I got from the library. Watching Bebe’s work my mind was blown. I sat in the audience afterwards stunned, I couldn’t quite understand what I had just experienced. I didn’t know dance could be like this, I didn’t know you could dance to music like that- I didn’t know anything like this was possible. After that, the world of dance and music was blown open for me.
Fast forward to 2007: I am so bold as to ask Bebe if she would be willing to act as a sort of mentor and come watch rehearsals, offer feedback, etc. Bebe generously watched various rehearsals through the years, gave me frank and deeply insightful feedback, allowed me into her rehearsals and in 2018 served as a formal mentor through a choreographer mentorship program with Jacob’s Pillow and the Princess Grace Foundation.
I have studied Bebe’s work and its vast territory like a student learning how to paint like the masters- staring at each piece, drawing them to learn the physicality of brush strokes, the control of paint and the understanding of each element's effect on the viewer. Or like my boyfriend teaching himself at fifteen how to play the guitar like Eddie VanHalen, not to sound like Van Halen but so that he has the skills to make his own songs. ;) I have learned so much from Bebe and am grateful to continue to. I’m thrilled to get to know Bebe in this way and so excited to open it up to all of you!
Bebe Miller + Navarra Novy-Williams in rehearsal process with zoe | juniper for The Other Shore: Future Ancestors at Jacob's Pillow in 2019.
Bebe Miller in her work Necessary Beauty | Photo by Julieta Cervantes
We remember remembering
Bebe Miller
I think that part of the reason I choreograph dances has to do with revisiting memory in some weird, made-up way. I am taken away by the chance to crystallize fleeting encounters I may have seen or remembered, stopping time and action long enough to read them from the inside—from the flesh, from a distance. I fact-check my attention, choreographically: What’s the rhythm? Where’s the focus? What’s the next dream move? I don’t carry the catalogue of my life in my head; well, not all of it anyway. But I do collect kinds of time, kinds of impulses and resolutions that I see around me.
Memory is the container; remembering activates the practice. I abstract the nutrients, shift the emphasis and make something new. I rearrange sensation and image, according to the form that emerges. It is the thrust of intention that sends an arm into space just so, rather than its placement there. I follow the timing between gestures, the rise of attention between people, the toss of their weight, the offhand smirk of a shoulder. Held in position a bit too long. My reasons for dancing does not need to be— nor is it—the reason for watching. My reasons for dancing—for dancemaking—might sit alongside the reasons one watches these dances, but then how would I know that? We come together empty handed, hearts and minds at the ready.
© Bebe Miller
Bebe Miller, a native New Yorker, formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985 to pursue her interest in finding a physical language for the human condition. BMC has been presented by such venues as 651 ARTS, BAM Next Wave, DTW, Jacob’s Pillow, Joyce Theater, PICA, REDCAT and Wexner Center for the Arts. Named a Master of African American Choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, Bebe is in the 2012 inaugural class of Doris Duke Artist Awardees and has been honored by Movement Research, Danspace Project and New York Live Arts. A Distinguished Professor Emerita in The Ohio State University’s Department of Dance she currently lives in a forest on Vashon Island, WA.
A Glimpse into Bebe’s Work:
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