Choreographer Bebe Miller

Tim Fulton 0:07Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, I sat down with Bebe Miller, acclaimed choreographer, dancer, and director of the Bebe Miller Dance Company, to talk about how she arrived at dance as an art form, her newest work, In A Rhythm, the keys to appreciating modern dance, and how the artistic process shapes the artistic end product. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Also, the Confluence Cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website, theconfluencecast.com, or at patreon.com/confluence. The Confluence Cast is sponsored by Art Makes Columbus, Columbus Makes Art, featuring stories about our city's incredible artists, stories full of inspiration, challenge, passion, and success. For videos, articles, an up-to-the-minute calendar of events, and an artist directory, visit columbusmakesart.com, the resource for all things arts and culture in the capital city. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with choreographer Bebe Miller on the occasion of her upcoming premiere of the work. The series of works? The work.

Bebe Miller 1:43Well, you know, it's kind of put together as w- as an idea of piecemeal pieces.

Tim Fulton 1:49Okay.

Bebe Miller 1:49Kind of a suite of dances, but it's really one-

Tim Fulton 1:52It's one evening

Bebe Miller 1:53It's one evening

Tim Fulton 1:54... of dance. The evening is called In A Rhythm.

Bebe Miller 1:57Yes. And most people probably won't think that, oh, that's a different dance than the other one. So maybe that's, I think, more our way of thinking of it rather than an audience's way of perceiving.

Tim Fulton 2:11Well, is the audience gonna sit through just the same dance over and over again? Is that what you're saying?

Bebe Miller 2:17Now, that's an idea, but don't think so.

Tim Fulton 2:19Well, you can test the... I mean, art is meant to challenge people, right?

Bebe Miller 2:22Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Fulton 2:23And so you can challenge their patience.

Bebe Miller 2:25Yeah. One of my first performances, not of my own work, but we did the same piece twice, only we changed facings, and it extended the 20 minutes of material into almost an evening of work, so.

Tim Fulton 2:36There you go.

Bebe Miller 2:37Yeah.

Tim Fulton 2:37Well, it's all about perception at that point, right?

Bebe Miller 2:39Mm-hmm.

Tim Fulton 2:40Bebe, you grew up in Brooklyn, came to the Ohio State University, got your MA back in 1975, went back to New York, formed the Bebe Miller Dance Company, and then chose to come back to Ohio. I'm sure there were other things in between.

Bebe Miller 2:54Other things in my life as well.

Tim Fulton 2:56But-

Bebe Miller 2:56But yeah

Tim Fulton 2:56... walk me through that sort of formative time 'cause you were a dancer growing up as well, but walk me through sort of the professional career.

Bebe Miller 3:04So let's go back to Brooklyn then.

Tim Fulton 3:06Okay.

Bebe Miller 3:06Growing up in Red Hook, Red Hook Projects, my mother was a nurse and then an elementary school teacher. My father was... My parents were separated and divorced early age, but my father was away being a steward on an ocean liner, so-

Tim Fulton 3:22Okay

Bebe Miller 3:22... came back with really interesting gifts. And my mother did an, an extraordinary job or effort of providing us with as many opportunities, cultural, mostly educational, that she could. She was part of the Great Migration before w- it was called the Great Migration of people moving up from the South. She was in-

Tim Fulton 3:49Okay

Bebe Miller 3:49... her 20s. Came up to be a domestic, impressed her employees, employers so much that they paid for her nursing school. So my mother was extraordinary.

Tim Fulton 4:00Yeah.

Bebe Miller 4:01And one of the things she did was start us up with dance classes. I was three. It was at a place called Henry Street Settlement House in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Tim Fulton 4:10Okay.

Bebe Miller 4:11And my teacher, my teachers were members of the Alwin Nikolais Dance Company, which if you were a modernist following dance at that time, you would know who he was.

Tim Fulton 4:24Okay.

Bebe Miller 4:25I had a really deep beginning in abstract modern dance. I improvised clouds and leaves and lines. And, um, doing that in and out of Red Hook, Brooklyn, was unusual, let's just say. Did that until I was 12 or so and tried to conform to everybody else, and there was no conforming to everybody else. And-

Tim Fulton 4:51Okay.

Bebe Miller 4:51... went to college and onward, kind of came back and found dance after my undergrad degree in art.

Tim Fulton 4:59Okay.

Bebe Miller 5:00Yeah. So that leads me to how I got here-

Tim Fulton 5:04Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 5:04... in the '70s is for, for my master's. I applied to dance and library school.

Tim Fulton 5:10Okay.

Bebe Miller 5:10Library science. I thought I'd make a good librarian. And dance ended up giving me money, and I came here. And-

Tim Fulton 5:17Did, and did you apply to the... Where were you applying to library science programs?

Bebe Miller 5:21You know, I can't remember where they were, but, um-

Tim Fulton 5:25Okay

Bebe Miller 5:25... uh-

Tim Fulton 5:25I'm just curious.

Bebe Miller 5:26Yeah. But I, I worked in, um, the library at Earlham College, where I went to school.

Tim Fulton 5:31Mm-hmm.

Bebe Miller 5:32And then I worked at Columbia University in the book order department in the library, and I just... I'm, I'm a kind of a quiet book reader-

Tim Fulton 5:40Okay

Bebe Miller 5:40... type, and I thought, like, "Shoot, that sounds great." I was also dancing.

Tim Fulton 5:45Right.

Bebe Miller 5:45And it didn't seem that I was starting necessarily on a career, but-

Tim Fulton 5:50You just said to yourself, "It's time for me to get a graduate degree," or?

Bebe Miller 5:54Not even that clear. My mother had just passed away. I was in my early 20s.

Tim Fulton 5:58Okay.

Bebe Miller 5:59So Vera Blain, a professor here in the department, got in touch with me. This was two years after I'd applied.

Tim Fulton 6:06Okay.

Bebe Miller 6:06And she said You know, we have a fellowship for you if you'd like to take it." And I went, "Oh, well, okay. It's like taking free dance classes," and I thought I would.

Tim Fulton 6:16And it changed.

Bebe Miller 6:17And it changed.

Tim Fulton 6:18Yeah.

Bebe Miller 6:18Yeah. It changed things. I felt that what I got was a context for the work that I was doing. I g- I knew who did it before me. I knew what else was around. I found dance in ways that I had not even imagined. I... Not that it was, like, really way out, but yeah, I put double Dutch jump- rope jumping in one of my, my pieces. It was-

Tim Fulton 6:43Okay

Bebe Miller 6:43... just, you know, like, why not?

Tim Fulton 6:44Right.

Bebe Miller 6:45So then I went back to New York, danced some more.

Tim Fulton 6:48But you were a dancer at that point. It had then become your career.

Bebe Miller 6:52Yeah.

Tim Fulton 6:52Okay.

Bebe Miller 6:52And it's funny about careers. You know, for lots of us it's you've been doing something for the past three, four years, and then you go like, "Huh, I guess this is my career."

Tim Fulton 7:00I guess this is what I do now.

Bebe Miller 7:01I guess this is what I do.

Tim Fulton 7:03Right.

Bebe Miller 7:03And I didn't... I mean, I was waiting tables, and I had, you know, office jobs. I had all of that as well, so it was the New York life.

Tim Fulton 7:12Right.

Bebe Miller 7:13It was lovely, and I was making. And the first, the first group piece I made was with the other waiters in my restaurant, so.

Tim Fulton 7:23Okay. Did they happen to be trained dancers as well?

Bebe Miller 7:26And they were dancers.

Tim Fulton 7:27Okay.

Bebe Miller 7:27Yeah, they were dancers. So what's also kind of weird is, like, you make one piece, and you don't think you're gonna make a second piece. It's all about, like, "Let me... Can I make a piece? Can I make a dance piece?"

Tim Fulton 7:37Okay.

Bebe Miller 7:38And we did, and it was okay.

Tim Fulton 7:41And people saw it.

Bebe Miller 7:42And people saw it.

Tim Fulton 7:43And they gave mostly positive feedback.

Bebe Miller 7:45Mostly posi- yeah. And then the idea that, oh, I could do this again. And they asked, and I'm like, "Okay, I'll do another piece." Literally, that really is what happened.

Tim Fulton 7:56Okay.

Bebe Miller 7:56So I slipped into this career, let's say.

Tim Fulton 8:01Okay.

Bebe Miller 8:01I was working with a choreographer doing her work, and, and her name was Nina Weiner, and I was starting on my own, so it just seemed like, huh, is that all there is? Is... Or is that what it is, that you just become what you're doing? And, and yeah, I... That was, that was great.

Tim Fulton 8:24And so how did you end up back in Ohio? Successful professional career. You decided to come back to Columbus in 2000, correct, to-

Bebe Miller 8:35Yeah

Tim Fulton 8:36... teach again.

Bebe Miller 8:36Yeah. And if not so much, like, yes, successful. We, Bebe Miller Company-

Tim Fulton 8:41Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 8:41... formed in 1985. We went on to tour nationally, internationally, in Europe. We've performed in Africa, South Africa, and what you would want as a career. And then-

Tim Fulton 8:55And for a company, right

Bebe Miller 8:56... and for a c- yeah-

Tim Fulton 8:57Right

Bebe Miller 8:57... for a company. We were a freelance, small, alternative dance company of, uh, six to eight dancers. It was great. It was... Oh, gosh. So when was the Mapplethorpe thing? Like '94.

Tim Fulton 9:08Okay.

Bebe Miller 9:09Early '90s. There w- the NEA Four, if you recall, where there was an issue of censorship. There was a, an artist, Robert Mapplethorpe, who was getting NEA funding, a, a photographer.

Tim Fulton 9:22Mm-hmm.

Bebe Miller 9:23And people didn't quite like what he was taking pictures of. And there was a, um, an African artist whose name f- just escapes me, who did a work with elephant dung on a crucifix or, or something like that, and so the iconography really made Mayor Giuliani crazy. So-

Tim Fulton 9:43Right

Bebe Miller 9:44... that was all in that '90s time of artistic censorship that was starting to happen. And it didn't... It's not like suddenly we had no work, but-

Tim Fulton 9:54Right

Bebe Miller 9:54... you know, two years down the line, the commissions, the performances just didn't come in quite as much as they had for alternative-

Tim Fulton 10:02Because the National Endowment for the Arts was sort of the thing, the fund that was keeping a lot of these things, or, or-

Bebe Miller 10:08National Endowment-

Tim Fulton 10:09Right

Bebe Miller 10:10... local New York State, State Arts Council, um-

Tim Fulton 10:12Oh, so it flowed downhill.

Bebe Miller 10:14Oh yeah.

Tim Fulton 10:14Yeah.

Bebe Miller 10:14Yeah, yeah.

Tim Fulton 10:15Okay.

Bebe Miller 10:15Really. And, you know, when you think of, of some small alternative theater, like at the Wexner Center for the Arts, receiving money from the NEA-

Tim Fulton 10:25Right

Bebe Miller 10:25... and receiving less money from the NEA, depending on who, perhaps depending on who they were-

Tim Fulton 10:30Right

Bebe Miller 10:30... who they were presenting. So I don't know if it was that explicit.

Tim Fulton 10:35Okay.

Bebe Miller 10:35I'm sure it wasn't, but we all felt the crunch. I still was working. I was still traveling and making dances, doing commissions, but I had less work with my company. And I gotta say, dancing and making dances with people in the room, that's really what it's about.

Tim Fulton 10:52Right.

Bebe Miller 10:53The idea of myself just making solos or going and teaching somebody else a dance-

Tim Fulton 10:57Right

Bebe Miller 10:58... was less-

Tim Fulton 10:59Appealing to you.

Bebe Miller 11:00Yeah, less interesting.

Tim Fulton 11:01Okay.

Bebe Miller 11:02So, so there's something about, I think truly about just the who's in the room, what are the jokes, where are those deep moments of thought as well as making that pulls you forward, and it's kinda why you do what you do, or it's why I do what I do, do. And so there was less work. Ohio State Department of Dance had been making the offer for a while, and I finally said-

Tim Fulton 11:29A cou- They kept reaching out.

Bebe Miller 11:30They kept... Yeah, and they-- And Karen Bell became chair.

Tim Fulton 11:35Uh-huh.

Bebe Miller 11:36And the offers changed enough to say, like, what if I could be teaching for two quarters of the year-

Tim Fulton 11:45Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 11:45... and maybe I could take the third quarter and continue my professional life in the city or elsewhere.

Tim Fulton 11:51Right.

Bebe Miller 11:52And it made it like, okay, I could do this. So I came-

Tim Fulton 11:54Had you maintained a connection with the university over that time?

Bebe Miller 11:58Yeah.

Tim Fulton 11:58I didn't-

Bebe Miller 11:58As a matter of fact, yeah. I taught here in the mid-'80s. We performed at the Wexner Center in the early '90s-

Tim Fulton 12:05Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 12:06... and mid-'90s, so, so I'd been back to Columbus often.

Tim Fulton 12:09Okay.

Bebe Miller 12:10Yeah, so and the department was really important to me, and it still is, so yeah. Yeah. I think it's that. Yeah.

Tim Fulton 12:18Karen Bell. That's the answer.

Bebe Miller 12:20Karen Bell.

Tim Fulton 12:20Had to come back here.

Bebe Miller 12:21Karen Bell. Thank you, Karen.

Tim Fulton 12:22Karen Bell.

Bebe Miller 12:23Yeah.

Tim Fulton 12:23Good. In a Rhythm comes to the Wexner Center November 30th through December 3rd. The promotional materials for the show talk about, quote, "The project explores the syntax of movement and how we absorb its meaning." Can you talk about that for perhaps the less sophisticated or less knowledgeable dance patrons, what people should watch for in the performance in order to appreciate it? Basically, and this can be referenced to In a Rhythm or to just dance in general, what should people be open to?

Bebe Miller 12:57Sure. Sure. I think in watching dance, one of the most important things to keep in mind is that as simple as it sounds, this is all happening through time.

Tim Fulton 13:09Mm-hmm.

Bebe Miller 13:09There's a beginning, there's a middle, and there's an end, and that there are choices that are being made, uh, by the artists involved about how they might want to take you toward the end-

Tim Fulton 13:21Okay

Bebe Miller 13:21... from the beginning that's set up. So I think it's not meant to be mysterious, but if we can imagine, and I think I speak for most choreographers, that there's a, there's a kind of, oh, what's gonna bring them forward in their chairs? Where do you get to, like, lean back and just maybe absorb a bit and kinda-

Tim Fulton 13:39Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 13:39... get lost? And then what's gonna bring you back again?

Tim Fulton 13:41Okay.

Bebe Miller 13:42So that whole leaning back and forward is choreographic.

Tim Fulton 13:46Okay.

Bebe Miller 13:47And inside of all of that, then there's a rise and fall of physicality and attention, and everybody goes, every- you know, somebody leaves the stage and there's one person left. It's like, how do they get there? How did that happen?

Tim Fulton 14:01Right.

Bebe Miller 14:02And I like to think of that as syntax in a way. It's syntactical.

Tim Fulton 14:07Right.

Bebe Miller 14:07Like, if you're reading a really good essay and the writer takes you someplace and then, like, leaves you and you jump off the cliff with them-

Tim Fulton 14:14Right

Bebe Miller 14:15... how do they do that? Now, we get to kinda go back and reread that, but I think in dance, somebody just did that with you, and then there's an understanding of like, "Oh, what shall we do with that moment now?" So I think sometimes when people are unfamiliar with dance, they're like, "Oh gosh, there's a story. Something's happening that I don't understand."

Tim Fulton 14:38Well, I was about to ask you if there's, if you would apply the word narrative to that. Because there's a beginning, middle, and end, which is a-

Bebe Miller 14:45Yeah

Tim Fulton 14:45... you know, a linear thing, which you can play with, right?

Bebe Miller 14:48Right. Right, right, right.

Tim Fulton 14:49There's, you know-

Bebe Miller 14:49Yeah, you can, you can think of it as story. I prefer story-ness.

Tim Fulton 14:53Okay.

Bebe Miller 14:54That it's less about there's a literal story-

Tim Fulton 14:56Right

Bebe Miller 14:56... but there's that kind of a sense like, oh, these people know each other, so something happened before, you know?

Tim Fulton 15:01It's story-ish.

Bebe Miller 15:02Story-ish. Story-ish. Story-y.

Tim Fulton 15:05Right.

Bebe Miller 15:07And so that then maybe we can, you can, we can relax about, like, following exactly what's going on.

Tim Fulton 15:12Okay.

Bebe Miller 15:12And I think also we as audience-goers in, in our culture, we are so cinematic. We will go and be confused by any movie and go again.

Tim Fulton 15:23Right.

Bebe Miller 15:24You know? So I would love for people to give dance that second chance if it didn't work out the first time. But let's just assume that it is working, and that there is something that is elusive that maybe ties into the elusive quality of your ordinary day. I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't understand everything that happens to me all day long.

Tim Fulton 15:47Right. Well, but you give yourself over to it a little bit.

Bebe Miller 15:50You do.

Tim Fulton 15:51Right?

Bebe Miller 15:51You do, and then you have another day and you absorb it and you move on. So, so there is that sense of like, oh, maybe somebody just posed a question for me that I don't know the answer to, and can I live with that? Rather than like, there's a question and I'm supposed to have the answer, and sometimes we don't have the answer, but it's-

Tim Fulton 16:10Right

Bebe Miller 16:10... the question or the sup- supposition like, "Oh, maybe. Oh, oh, ooh, I felt that. I felt it. I felt it." I don't know.

Tim Fulton 16:17But why did?

Bebe Miller 16:19Yeah.

Tim Fulton 16:19Right.

Bebe Miller 16:20The why becomes less important than actually feeling the thing.

Tim Fulton 16:23Okay. I guess just to translate you a little bit-

Bebe Miller 16:26Yeah

Tim Fulton 16:26... what you're saying is give yourself over to the work, take it in, be observant, and take what you can from it rather than questioning what were they doing or what, what is that supposed to mean to me.

Bebe Miller 16:41Right.

Tim Fulton 16:42It's really how does that make me feel, how does that challenge me, 'cause then in the end that's the whole purpose, right?

Bebe Miller 16:48And in the end that's the whole purpose.

Tim Fulton 16:50Good.

Bebe Miller 16:50And in the end, sometimes the choreographer can't answer that question either-

Tim Fulton 16:54Okay.

Bebe Miller 16:55... or the dancers involved, but it's like there's something in there that, uh, I wanna follow and I don't know where it's gonna lead me, so.

Tim Fulton 17:04Can you talk about, dance has always been interesting and challenging to me in that it's not, it can't necessarily, and you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, be prescriptive in future creation in that there isn't, it- it's not music on a sheet.

Bebe Miller 17:23No, you see-

Tim Fulton 17:23I worked, I worked here at the Wexner Center when William Forsythe was doing some i- really interesting work that I felt like I got dance a little bit better-

Bebe Miller 17:32Mm

Tim Fulton 17:32... when he sort of created this, I'm sure you saw the work that was in the galleries here at the Wexner Center, where he sort of created a musical score of this is what the dancer does now.

Bebe Miller 17:43Oh.

Tim Fulton 17:43And this is how they interact with each other.

Bebe Miller 17:45Yeah.

Tim Fulton 17:45They did some work with the, uh, I don't know what the motion capture-

Bebe Miller 17:49Oh, ACAD and, yeah.

Tim Fulton 17:50Yeah. With, with-

Bebe Miller 17:50Sure

Tim Fulton 17:51... with ACAD. As it relates to the creation of a work-

Bebe Miller 17:55Mm-hmm

Tim Fulton 17:55... how does dance get documented? Because obviously, I mean, there are people still performing like Merce Cunningham work.

Bebe Miller 18:04Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Fulton 18:04How does that happen?

Bebe Miller 18:06Thank goodness for video for one.

Tim Fulton 18:08Okay.

Bebe Miller 18:09Which is a sort of a mixed blessing. It is such an oral tradition-

Tim Fulton 18:13Okay

Bebe Miller 18:13... and a physical tradition that generally You are shown through a body, one to another, what an action is.

Tim Fulton 18:22Okay.

Bebe Miller 18:23And your body remembers that, and then that gets, I mean, as simple as it sounds, that's what then, you know, gets reproduced.

Tim Fulton 18:33Right.

Bebe Miller 18:33So I think we are clearly living in a virtual age. Now, we all are familiar with video. We all have them on our cameras, and we forget sometimes that that is just one record of one performance perhaps.

Tim Fulton 18:47Right.

Bebe Miller 18:48But we do get to see and re-see, like, what was that series of interactions? And our body, we are smart. We are physically smart.

Tim Fulton 18:58Okay.

Bebe Miller 18:59We understand how movement works and how the body works. So I think there, you know, how a work is, is repeatable is something that lots of choreographers aim for.

Tim Fulton 19:11Okay.

Bebe Miller 19:11People like Bill Forsythe and even myself, because we work... Now I'm, I work very much with scored improvisation as well as with set choreography and-

Tim Fulton 19:23Okay

Bebe Miller 19:23... as he does, too. It becomes less important than having it look exactly like it looked the night before, but can you narrow down, nail down the intention behind a movement-

Tim Fulton 19:35Okay

Bebe Miller 19:35... or a series of movements, and that that's what gets repeated.

Tim Fulton 19:38And is that written out, or is that-

Bebe Miller 19:42Eh.

Tim Fulton 19:42Or the, you know, do you tape off the stage as you would in theater to hit your mark?

Bebe Miller 19:47There's some, there's some of that.

Tim Fulton 19:48Okay.

Bebe Miller 19:49But there's also, there's a lot of, if I leap over in this direction and there's a person coming in at that time, generally I'm gonna be in the right place and we're-

Tim Fulton 19:57Right

Bebe Miller 19:57... gonna connect. So there's the repetition. The repetition, which is, I think, in French or something about, like, what rehearsal is. It's like-

Tim Fulton 20:05Okay

Bebe Miller 20:06... you do it again and again. So for me, I feel less interested, even than I was, like, 20 years ago, about like what exactly is that step? But I am now more attuned to what exactly made you move in that direction in the first place-

Tim Fulton 20:25Okay

Bebe Miller 20:25... and can I just kinda, can we hold onto that intention behind movement rather than, and let that lead the specifics.

Tim Fulton 20:34Got it.

Bebe Miller 20:35Yeah. That may be kind of way over your head.

Tim Fulton 20:37No, no, no.

Bebe Miller 20:38But it's-

Tim Fulton 20:39I think that it, I think it inspires people, to go back to your earlier point, of sort of letting go.

Bebe Miller 20:45Yeah.

Tim Fulton 20:45And as an audience member, realizing that it's not necessarily as prescriptive as we perceive it to be-

Bebe Miller 20:55Mm-hmm

Tim Fulton 20:55... because it's, it's, 'cause it is beautiful, and it is, there is this thing happening.

Bebe Miller 21:01Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, I just had a thought-

Tim Fulton 21:02Please

Bebe Miller 21:02... about the prescriptive. And 'cause I, you know, I'm, I'm a little lost with thinking of it in quite in that way. But sometimes I think when people are looking at complex movement, a lot of what comes up is like how do they know what they're doing? How do they, where are they gonna go? And so you lose, you're, you're holding onto what, hoping that they're holding onto it, too.

Tim Fulton 21:23Exactly.

Bebe Miller 21:23But what if we could just let it go and watch and just sort of like, oh, he's really cueing off of this other person, or their relationship came out of the blue, as relationships often do, and seemed to, like, change everything. Um-

Tim Fulton 21:38Well, and allow it to be story-ish. And, like, yes, appreciate the beauty. Yes, appreciate, you know, to some aspect, the physicality and the difficulty and the training that must be behind this.

Bebe Miller 21:48Yeah.

Tim Fulton 21:49But that's not what it's about.

Bebe Miller 21:50Yeah.

Tim Fulton 21:51It's a performance art.

Bebe Miller 21:52Yeah.

Tim Fulton 21:52And so take in the performance.

Bebe Miller 21:54Yes.

Tim Fulton 21:54And I think I now know why I've always had such difficulty with dance. So-

Bebe Miller 22:00Yeah

Tim Fulton 22:00... because I, I embrace the William Forsythe work, which I'll link in the show notes, so much because I was like, "Oh."

Bebe Miller 22:07Oh, finally.

Tim Fulton 22:08Finally.

Bebe Miller 22:08Yeah.

Tim Fulton 22:08'Cause my background's in theater-

Bebe Miller 22:10Uh-huh

Tim Fulton 22:10... and so I understand a script and, you know, staging and all that. And so if I see a piece of theater, I can give myself away and say, "Oh, they got this."

Bebe Miller 22:21Yeah. Sure.

Tim Fulton 22:22And it's not, oh, does that guy know he's not supposed to run into that other person?

Bebe Miller 22:26Yeah.

Tim Fulton 22:26Or maybe they are-

Bebe Miller 22:27Yeah

Tim Fulton 22:27... supposed to run into each other.

Bebe Miller 22:28Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Fulton 22:29So.

Bebe Miller 22:30And, you know, we have, we have hundreds and hundreds of years of theater-

Tim Fulton 22:34Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 22:34... in our bones.

Tim Fulton 22:36Yeah.

Bebe Miller 22:36And so we understand, like, how that works. Dance, not so much.

Tim Fulton 22:39Well-

Bebe Miller 22:40So, well, well, 'cause actually dance-

Tim Fulton 22:43Is older

Bebe Miller 22:44... older, older.

Tim Fulton 22:45It was theater.

Bebe Miller 22:46Older. Yeah.

Tim Fulton 22:46I mean, right.

Bebe Miller 22:47And it was, it was ritual. It was, like, how we prayed. It's how we just kind of like, whoa, whoa.

Tim Fulton 22:51It's how we greeted.

Bebe Miller 22:52How we-

Tim Fulton 22:52It's how we celebrated.

Bebe Miller 22:54Exactly.

Tim Fulton 22:54Right. It's everything.

Bebe Miller 22:55Exactly. So but skip forward, like, a few thousand years-

Tim Fulton 22:59Right

Bebe Miller 22:59... to contemporary dance.

Tim Fulton 23:00Right.

Bebe Miller 23:01And now it's like, what are they doing? And should I be paying... And do they know? And I don't even... And maybe even just, oh, listen to the tone of my questions. They come really, really rapidly and fast. Maybe that's, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh. Somebody just made that happen for me.

Tim Fulton 23:19Right.

Bebe Miller 23:20I have a, just a quick little story.

Tim Fulton 23:22Please.

Bebe Miller 23:22There's a Twyla Tharp piece from 1990-something called Fate Accompli.

Tim Fulton 23:27Okay.

Bebe Miller 23:28I saw it in New York. I got to the theater just a little bit before it started, so I'm sitting in my seat. I'm taking off my coat, and 45 minutes later, my coat is in the same position. Really, truly. And it was like-

Tim Fulton 23:43And this is for somebody who knows, who works within-

Bebe Miller 23:45Yeah

Tim Fulton 23:46... right.

Bebe Miller 23:47But I just went, "What is she doing?" And it's not that I'm like, "Oh, a good step, that," but it's like, wow, whoa, whoa. They came from behind. They came from, with brooms, and they sh- swept the floor, and then this other... You know, it was like one thing after another. I mean, that was Twyla Tharp in 1994 with that piece, but-

Tim Fulton 24:05Right

Bebe Miller 24:05... but that sense of, like, movement, there was no story. It was just... And music. It was like a, a way through time that was totally captivating. So-

Tim Fulton 24:18I love it

Bebe Miller 24:18... I w- I love that. And can- I don't know if this piece is that. I would love that to be, but, uh, maybe. But I also love the fact that like, oh, I mean, oh, I get a little tired with them, too. Looks so empty. I don't know. Oh. Hmm. No.

Tim Fulton 24:36And then you're back.

Bebe Miller 24:37And then you're back, so.

Tim Fulton 24:38Right. Talk about the development of Inner Rhythm. You were working with also a choreographer, Susan Rothorst.

Bebe Miller 24:45Okay, there's two things. One, there is the project The Making Room-

Tim Fulton 24:49Okay

Bebe Miller 24:50... which is why- my project with Sue. In that Bebe Miller Company kind of design this, I asked Susan to work with, well, not with me, but kind of journey with me-

Tim Fulton 25:03Okay

Bebe Miller 25:03... over the course of a year where we're both working on our separate dances.

Tim Fulton 25:08Okay.

Bebe Miller 25:08We convene three times live and other times virtually just to kind of check in, like, "How are you doing? What you doing? Da, da, da, da. What's your process? Bah, ah, ah, ah."

Tim Fulton 25:16Okay.

Bebe Miller 25:17And then at the end there's some kind of conflagration of da, da.

Tim Fulton 25:24Uh-huh.

Bebe Miller 25:24This is what we did. My piece that I made during that time-

Tim Fulton 25:28During that time

Bebe Miller 25:28... is Inner Rhythm. Yeah, yeah.

Tim Fulton 25:30Okay.

Bebe Miller 25:30So we can talk about-

Tim Fulton 25:31And so is The Making Room a project in and of itself-

Bebe Miller 25:34Yes

Tim Fulton 25:34... that sort of informs process or is meant to inform?

Bebe Miller 25:38Yeah. The Making Room is the process of-

Tim Fulton 25:41Is it a process? I don't want to lend too much credence to it, but did you create a different process that's not commonly used for choreographers to develop work and work with each other in concert?

Bebe Miller 25:55I think what was uncommon, what is uncommon is that we had our March 2016, we were in the same room with, like, two dancers and-

Tim Fulton 26:05Okay

Bebe Miller 26:05... and we said, "Let's make... Go ahead." I worked for two hours with these two dancers, and then she worked with two. I was like, "Oh, look at that. How did you do that? Uh, why did you do that this way?"

Tim Fulton 26:14Right.

Bebe Miller 26:14You know, the idea of, like, looking at our processes-

Tim Fulton 26:17Okay

Bebe Miller 26:17... through time.

Tim Fulton 26:18Okay.

Bebe Miller 26:18Move away from that. I continue with these dancers and like, oh, well, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. Let's bring in some more others down the way, and lo and behold, I'm making a dance.

Tim Fulton 26:28Okay.

Bebe Miller 26:29And then I check in with Sue. What are you doing? How did you... So on and so forth. The Making Room as a project is culminating with a portal, a website portal-

Tim Fulton 26:39Okay

Bebe Miller 26:40... that kind of tracks that chronology for both of us. We will be, um, kind of having a combined performance at New York Live Arts-

Tim Fulton 26:49Okay

Bebe Miller 26:49... in February 2018 working in some way with both of our pieces. And then there's gonna be an e-book that is released June 2018-

Tim Fulton 27:01Okay

Bebe Miller 27:01... as sort of a culminating thing of that project. So inside of that-

Tim Fulton 27:05And so who's making that? So there's the Wexner Center Residency Award that helps pay for the development of-

Bebe Miller 27:12Inner Rhythm

Tim Fulton 27:13... Inner Rhythm.

Bebe Miller 27:14Yes.

Tim Fulton 27:15How did the, you know, the web portal, the e-book, how did that come about?

Bebe Miller 27:19National Endowment for the Arts.

Tim Fulton 27:21They're back.

Bebe Miller 27:22Yeah . They're back. Thank God.

Tim Fulton 27:24We're fir- full, we're full circle now.

Bebe Miller 27:26Yeah, yeah. So and yeah, we, our project, you know, thanks to the Greater Columbus Arts Council and the Ohio Arts Council, as well as National Endowment and-

Tim Fulton 27:35Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 27:35... and other funders, we, that was, that's that project.

Tim Fulton 27:40Got it.

Bebe Miller 27:41And inside of that or alongside of that project-

Tim Fulton 27:44Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 27:44... is actually a piece that we made which has its own funding and so on and so forth. So-

Tim Fulton 27:51Now I understand.

Bebe Miller 27:52Yeah. It's a, it's the umbrella beun- Yeah.

Tim Fulton 27:55Right.

Bebe Miller 27:55Yeah.

Tim Fulton 27:55But you've got, it's a rainforest. You've got a couple different layers there.

Bebe Miller 27:59Yeah.

Tim Fulton 27:59Yeah.

Bebe Miller 28:00Yeah.

Tim Fulton 28:00That's fantastic.

Bebe Miller 28:01Yeah. Good metaphor.

Tim Fulton 28:03Can you talk about the authors that inspired Inner Rhythm-

Bebe Miller 28:06Sure

Tim Fulton 28:06... and talk about that?

Bebe Miller 28:08Okay. Let me just go back to Inner Rhythm for s- I mean, I mean, The Making Room for a second.

Tim Fulton 28:13Yeah.

Bebe Miller 28:13So Sue and I were off thinking about our own work, and I'm reading David Foster Wallace. I kind of got turned on to him through... Did you see the film The End of the Tour?

Tim Fulton 28:26I did not.

Bebe Miller 28:27Well, it was by the Rolling Stone writer David somebody else who went to interview him for the Rolling Stone, and it was never published.

Tim Fulton 28:36I saw the trailer.

Bebe Miller 28:37Yes.

Tim Fulton 28:37Yeah.

Bebe Miller 28:38Yeah. It's really good.

Tim Fulton 28:39Is it good?

Bebe Miller 28:39Jason Segel is-

Tim Fulton 28:40Yeah.

Bebe Miller 28:40Yeah, he's really good.

Tim Fulton 28:41Okay.

Bebe Miller 28:42Anyway, that kind of got me back to Wallace. I, I had kind of like, oh, Infinite Jest. Wait, I can't do it.

Tim Fulton 28:48Right.

Bebe Miller 28:49But what I got fascinated with is, I don't know, I'm a foodie. I'm a b- I'm a bookie about, about literature and, and language, that there is a way on a written page that an author takes you to some place.

Tim Fulton 29:04Mm-hmm.

Bebe Miller 29:04Ian McEwan was another writer, a book called Saturday that we used actually as a, as a reference for a work where how you're reading along and it's totally mundane, and then suddenly you're just, you're at the edge of your chair. You don't know exactly how he did that.

Tim Fulton 29:21Right.

Bebe Miller 29:22And it's the sy- it's the syntax.

Tim Fulton 29:24Yep.

Bebe Miller 29:25It's the syntax in the, in the sentence. It's, like, kind of the structure of the language on the page. It's the juxtaposition of one thing after another in time. And I went, "Hey, we do that in dance. This is what we do." So, so I kind of-

Tim Fulton 29:39'Cause it's both the words used and the rhythm of those words and sort of the... 'Cause you're speaking to yourself as you're reading-

Bebe Miller 29:45Yeah

Tim Fulton 29:45... a little bit, right?

Bebe Miller 29:46Yeah.

Tim Fulton 29:46And so there's a cadence that's created as well-

Bebe Miller 29:48Exactly. Exactly

Tim Fulton 29:49... which is directly translatable to dance.

Bebe Miller 29:51Oh, totally.

Tim Fulton 29:52Yeah.

Bebe Miller 29:52I mean, there's energy. There's, there's energy. There's energy. There's passion.

Tim Fulton 29:56Right.

Bebe Miller 29:56There's not so much pa- And in time. And, and this isn't my only idea or my own idea, but it's like-

Tim Fulton 30:04Okay

Bebe Miller 30:04... it's, it to me just that, that, the revelation of how we receive information-

Tim Fulton 30:10Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 30:10... and what comes before it, what comes after it. And as a choreographer, my, my job, my fun is to shift the order, to interrupt what's expected-

Tim Fulton 30:20Okay

Bebe Miller 30:20... to then kind of figure out What else can happen? Even interrupting the dancers so that they don't do what they're expecting. So that whole sense of what we think the bodies mean to each other-

Tim Fulton 30:34Right

Bebe Miller 30:34... and what- how that is crafted is what I work with. That's the meaningfulness that I'm aiming for. It's not different than the meaning. I don't have, I don't have a manifesto that I'm trying to get across. I just-

Tim Fulton 30:48Okay

Bebe Miller 30:48... d- let other people do that.

Tim Fulton 30:50That's not your art.

Bebe Miller 30:51That's not my art.

Tim Fulton 30:52Right.

Bebe Miller 30:52But I, I do feel that, that we understand when we've hit something that's meaningful. We just kind of, we get a gravitas or a joy in that. And, and arriving at that in whatever method is what really I'm passionate about. And with a writer, you can reread it.

Tim Fulton 31:12Mm-hmm.

Bebe Miller 31:12And then the crafter in me goes like, "How did he, did he, why did he do that sentence first?" I'm like, "Huh, what is it about that pacing of voice in the first person plural?" I mean, or what is that when you're talking about yourself and you're saying you?

Tim Fulton 31:27Third person.

Bebe Miller 31:28Thank you. Anyway, that, that he uses in his story Forever Overhead.

Tim Fulton 31:33Okay.

Bebe Miller 31:34I think it's called. And very different than he uses in Incantations of Burned Children, which was, are two different stories, and I even had the dancers read that, are vastly different in content and feeling, but they are remarkable.

Tim Fulton 31:51So would you say that the dances are interpretations of those works, but it interpreted in, like, not a, certainly not in a narrative format, but in, like, the cadence we were talking about?

Bebe Miller 32:04Yeah.

Tim Fulton 32:05Because that, that's the kind of work you were seeking out, right?

Bebe Miller 32:09Yeah, and I, I think for both stories, what hits me is, like, his, how the mundane sits alongside the terrific or the terror.

Tim Fulton 32:18Okay.

Bebe Miller 32:19How the dailiness of a series of actions just, just is enveloped in and around something that is utterly, um... My hands are waving in the air to describe this. But it's just, like, you know, it just takes your breath away. So I got interested in that juxtaposition, not so much the literalness of the story itself-

Tim Fulton 32:40Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 32:40... but just what are these dynamics and how do they sit one against the other and can I do that?

Tim Fulton 32:46Right.

Bebe Miller 32:46How would I do that? How do I do that? And it's the question of how, not so much the answer. Like, "See? I did it." I don't know if I did it. But I, but I'm, I, that's what I'm aiming for.

Tim Fulton 32:56Right.

Bebe Miller 32:58So in all the, the press that one might read about this piece that's gonna be at the Wexner, and if they mention David Foster Wallace stories or Toni Morrison and expect to hear David Foster Wallace stories or Toni Morrison, it's not gonna happen. And in that way-

Tim Fulton 33:14They're gonna be a little disappointed

Bebe Miller 33:16... they are.

Tim Fulton 33:16Right.

Bebe Miller 33:17But, but we have done our homework, and there's something about their quality that has been fascinating to me, and I hope I've made the dancers fascinated by that as well. So-

Tim Fulton 33:31So the two stories that inspired the work, both David Foster Wallace.

Bebe Miller 33:35Yes.

Tim Fulton 33:35So Forever Overhead and then Incantations of Burned-

Bebe Miller 33:39Incarnations of-

Tim Fulton 33:40Excuse me. Incarnations of Burned Children.

Bebe Miller 33:43Yes.

Tim Fulton 33:43That's very different from Incantations-

Bebe Miller 33:45Yes

Tim Fulton 33:45... because

Bebe Miller 33:46Yeah. Ooh. But also-

Tim Fulton 33:48Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 33:49... the Zadie Smith-

Tim Fulton 33:51Okay

Bebe Miller 33:51... and I kinda got on the, on the Wallace kick. I was reading her wonderful essay about him called Difficult Gifts, and came across this line. And please-

Tim Fulton 34:03And I'll read it for you.

Bebe Miller 34:04Thank you.

Tim Fulton 34:05This is in reference to David Foster Wallace. "His recursive, labyrinthine sentences demand second readings. Like the boy waiting to dive, their resistance breaks the rhythm that excludes thinking."

Bebe Miller 34:18Breaks the rhythm that excludes thinking. So there's a broken rhythm.

Tim Fulton 34:25Mm-hmm.

Bebe Miller 34:26In breaking it, you don't need to think. You just absorb that. And so there's something about in the rhythm or out of rhythm, in rhythm that feels really central. Given that, then-

Tim Fulton 34:42Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 34:42... there's a whole layer of Toni Morrison. I found this great interview between Toni Morrison and Charlie Rose where she's harping on another interviewer who kind of mis- You know, "When, when are you gonna stop writing about race?" That kind of a question, which of course she was just totally insulted by. Uh-

Tim Fulton 35:03As well she should be.

Bebe Miller 35:04Yes. But when you read Toni Morrison, and particularly I think it was Jazz, her book Jazz-

Tim Fulton 35:11Yeah

Bebe Miller 35:11... where she made a real point of saying, "I'm not gonna say these are Black people or white pe- I'm just, these are the people."

Tim Fulton 35:17Right.

Bebe Miller 35:17And it's like it's not her job to demonstrate the expectations of the expected reader.

Tim Fulton 35:26Of, right.

Bebe Miller 35:27It's her, her job to tell the story. And so, you know, just that idea of what is expected, what's to be demonstrated rather than what's to be lived and experienced.

Tim Fulton 35:37Mm-hmm.

Bebe Miller 35:37Which kinda goes back to our other question about, like, what is happening in dance?

Tim Fulton 35:41Right.

Bebe Miller 35:41We're experiencing it, so.

Tim Fulton 35:43Right. I wanna wrap up today just by talking about your perceptions of the Columbus in general, the Columbus art scene, and what you see what we can do better at.

Bebe Miller 35:54When I was first here, I guess it's 30 years ago or more, you know, my, my Columbus art scene was in the dance department.

Tim Fulton 36:02Mm-hmm.

Bebe Miller 36:02Wasn't even in Sullivan Hall. It was a little, it was a laundry building way in the west side of campus.

Tim Fulton 36:06Okay.

Bebe Miller 36:07And Short North didn't exist except for the artists who happened to live there and before it really had a name.

Tim Fulton 36:14Right.

Bebe Miller 36:15So the art scene in Columbus I think has emerged in a really organic way that has- nicely been illuminated by-

Tim Fulton 36:28Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 36:28... the civic structure.

Tim Fulton 36:30Yeah.

Bebe Miller 36:30And I appreciate that. It's a little harder for an artist to live in the Short North these days.

Tim Fulton 36:36Little bit.

Bebe Miller 36:36Yeah. But there is another level of, if not benefit, then of exchange-

Tim Fulton 36:44Right

Bebe Miller 36:44... uh, of a economy that's, that's come up. Columbus, it's so interesting 'cause it was like a, a stop for every rock and roll band who recorded, you know, f- through the '70s and '80s and '90s. So the music scene has been functioning really well and underground-

Tim Fulton 37:01Yeah

Bebe Miller 37:01... for decades. And I feel like there has been more of a underground visual art, some dance as well, but, but now that I feel like there are... there's enough support through Greater Columbus Arts Council, Arts, Ohio Arts Council, other forms of, of like let's kind of hold onto that and hopefully allow it to find voice and space rather than-

Tim Fulton 37:27Its place, right

Bebe Miller 37:28... yeah, rather than dictating to it, so, or yeah. It's always a tricky thing. I mean-

Tim Fulton 37:34Yeah

Bebe Miller 37:34... this, this Soho in New York is an example of, like, what happens. Our society does work, uh, quite a bit on the cycling of resources in an economy.

Tim Fulton 37:45Yeah.

Bebe Miller 37:46But that said, I, I feel like someplace like the Wexner has been a beacon for... I'm more taken with the behind-the-scenes, the kind of the low level, the open, open classes, the, the extended residencies-

Tim Fulton 38:00Mm-hmm

Bebe Miller 38:00... how you can see artists who are working and making, not only just producing. So places like the Wexner and other gallery spaces are, are feeding that-

Tim Fulton 38:11Yeah

Bebe Miller 38:12... really wonderfully. So, you know, it's also something that it's tenuous. We all have to keep a, an eye out for how can we keep this up.

Tim Fulton 38:21Yeah, certainly.

Bebe Miller 38:23Um, but, um, I've seen several of my friends up on billboards.

Tim Fulton 38:29It's a good campaign.

Bebe Miller 38:30Yeah, it's a great campaign, and we're grateful.

Tim Fulton 38:32Yeah. Great. Bebe Miller, thank you so much for your time.

Bebe Miller 38:35Thank you, Tim. Great talking to you.

Tim Fulton 38:45Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite dancer. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.