BEBE MILLER

St. Mark’s Church, located in the East Village of NYC, was founded in 1799 with Alexander Hamilton helping incorporate it as the first Episcopalian parish in the US. This church became a sanctuary as a cultural arts center because of rector Rev. William Guthrie (1911-37), declaring that “dancers could and would be trained to interpret religion: “the dance is the most inevitable form of expression; it is the human body speaking…an intelligent religion will idealize it.” This tradition continues to this day in worship services and with Danspace Project (founded in 1974 by Barbara Dilley and Larry Fagin), offering a sanctuary for many forms of dance. 

Bebe Miller, award winning choreographer and professor emeritus at Ohio State University, returned to Danspace Project sanctuary this week-end to reunite with her past after decades in the field as one of the first groundbreaking black modern dancers. She reimagined a very early work Vespers (1982), meaning “evening prayers,”  in what she describes as an “archeological dig’ into how we’ve arrived at our various understandings of the art, currencies, and physics of dancing.”

We in the audience wait for the dance to begin by first observing a projection on the back wall of Miller dancing the original solo as a young woman. Now, at age 75, she walks on, wearing professorial granny glasses, dressed in black, reading notes scribbled on cards. She tells us that improvisation is her language; and reminisces that her early invitation to show her work was not through email, text, or message machine…all was through person- to-person communication…and now she is translating that early innocent work to young, new dancers of a different generation. 

Five dancers line-up with Bebe at the base of the altar, facing the stage. They begin improvising through their lithe, technical bodies as the group travels forward, still in a line, to the end of the stage. Singers hum from the balcony above.  The dancers leave, then re-enter. They cluster and mingle close together, rarely touching, although their intimacy is specific and dynamic in the spaces between.

Tempos increase as two sit out while two dance.  Then Bebe dances a solo: carving space, lungeing, circling, walking off.  The lights dim. A drummer (Hearn Gadbois) plays from the altar, as a single statuesque man shakes, shudders, and undulates to the rhythm. The vocalist (K.J.Holmes) re-enters and jams with the drummer. 

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All five dancers now re-enter while Bebe, humorously teases them with her laptop, defying them to learn the original movement from the screen as she shuffles away from them. The collaborating dancers: Bria Bacon, Jasmine Hearn, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Chloe London, Stacy Matter Spence perform difficult and exacting solos, then a trio, then a solo as the lighting changes to red. 

St. Mark’s Church bells begin to toll as the dancers again stand at the base of the altar, each balancing precariously on one foot as they gingerly step forward, towards light and the future in front of them as they finally exit. 

As an addendum, Bebe encircles the stage, calling out the names of her predecessors and colleagues, now deceased, but ones who filled the space at one time with their artistry and spirit. She ends with: “This is our now… Now.”  Her dance was an evening prayer; a blessing of the space, her gratitude as a survivor after years of work. She glances back at an archive that set the future for what dance has now become. 

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Mary Seidman