ANDREA MILLER

Mother marked the return of Andrea Miller’s evening length works, the first since 2018. Premiering at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea, Mother is a masterpiece of individuality, vulnerability, and strangeness. Mother invites the viewers, dancers, and Miller herself to explore: what does the creation of creation look and feel like? The act of motherhood is this exploration, and Mother digs right in. A brilliant excavation.

A particular potency of Gallim dancers and Andrea Miller’s choreography is the extreme use of obscurity, encouraging the body to escape its typical boundaries. Through the thematic ranges of the repertoire, dancers find anatomically defying positions, extensions so far from Laban’s kinesphere that their limbs (and spirits!) arguably transcend. Otherworldly beings take up the stage as Miller’s movement embodies this consistently.

Revealing their range, dancers contorted their bodies in impressive partnering, striking
articulations of their arms and legs, bobs and twitches of their heads and extremities.
Dancer Billy Barry even changed character, dancing in a huge white tasseled work of art, a culturally-inspired regalia of sorts. The entire piece was extraordinarily layered, over the ambient sound score and guttural vocalizations.

Where Mother jumps into new territory is within the elemental design collaborations, which are more often secondary. With Mother, these ingredients are as rich and vibrantly meaningful as the movement.

During the talkback, costume designer Orly Anan described her process. Despite typically creating bold, colossal art, when invited to tackle the skintight Mother unitards, she trusted the process, toning it down since her usual extreme shapes and sculptural pieces were replaced by powerful dancers- “moving sculptures.” Her task was to develop a blushing of each dancer, and to her, “costume is the portrait of the mission of each individual”.

It also seems Mother wouldn’t be Mother without the extraordinarily vibrant lighting, designed by Vincent Vigilante with Sage Green. Their designs shape, identify and set off silhouettes that bounce between light waves.

To quote Harrison Ball, who eloquently and with immense care moderated the Curtain Chat, it was “Appropriately Meta.” Miller is doing the brave and vulnerable work, and it is no surprise Gallim has the reputation that it does as she continues to push boundaries.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Emma Edy Morris