Dance companies wow

DANA SCHLANGER

In Hebrew, gallim means waves. By choosing this name for her New York-based dance company, Andrea Miller has conjured an evocative, kinetic image, as well as offered insight into her identity as a choreographer – and who she is as a choreographer is making waves in the dance world.

While Gallim Dance is poised to enjoy a storm of critical and audience acclaim, Miller spoke with the Independent from Holland, where she is creating two new works for a local company.

Born to a Spanish mother and Jewish-American father, and strongly influenced by both her cultural heritages, the issue of identity, as a human being and an artist, is never far from the surface.

“I even have dual citizenship, American and Spanish, and it definitely had a strong influence in the kind of person I’ve become,” Miller said. “My mom was also a concert pianist and I grew up listening to a lot of music all the time and being quizzed about ‘Who is the composer? What piece, which style?’ So music was a big part of my childhood. And also both my parents are physicians, so I think looking at the body, trying to understand it, was always a big part of my growing up and still is, when I talk to them.”

Her identity as a choreographer was powerfully shaped by the time she spent dancing with Israel’s famed contemporary dance company Batsheva, led by Ohad Naharin, who captivated Vancouver’s audiences as part of last year’s Chutzpah! festival. While in Israel, Miller trained in Naharin’s Gaga movement language, which she described as “many windows opening in our bodies and brains, functioning individually or simultaneously to create together a multi-dimensional, multi-tasking, multi-layered way of moving.”

Having been described as playing “inside the imagination, to find juxtapositions of the mind and body that resonate in the soul,” this technique evokes the intensity, fluidity and extreme physicality of Miller’s choreography, with movement that shifts between explosive power and contained tension.

Miller explained her evolution as “a natural distance of time from when I was fully immersed in Gaga, it feels that I’m in the process of researching other aspects – but Gaga is not a point in space that I’m going away from or towards.... The Humphrey-Weidman technique, which I studied through growing up and going to Julliard, is very important to me as well, so it’s becoming a more rounded process of understanding my voice.” It’s a voice that now also speaks Hebrew fluently. “Maybe I can’t talk about science or politics,” laughed Miller, “but I am fluent in anything that goes on between friends or in the dance studio!”

At Chutzpah!, Gallim Dance will present I Can See Myself in Your Pupil. Miller described the piece as “a series of vignettes, a collage of really different pieces, sometimes connected by a thread because of their movement vocabulary, danced to a lot of different musics, ranging from electronic to Maria Callas, but mainly by the Israeli group Balkan Beat Box, that is also coming to perform in the festival.”

Opening for Gallim is Sidra Bell Dance New York (SBDNY), touted as “an emerging and sought-after voice in contemporary dance with a strong female vision.” Reached in New York, Bell described her company as, “a project-based company with a core of about 16 dancers.”

Since both Gallim and SBDNY are young, up-and-coming groups, they seem to be a natural fit and have been presented several times together; the two choreographers also teach together in a summer project for young dancers, which they view as an essential part of their own development and education.

“I think we are distinct yet compatible companies in the way we see where dance is going. We think about dance in very passionate ways – we are presented on the same programs because the work is very exciting but at the same time very different,” said Bell. “We’re bringing to Vancouver a short work, Anthology, comprised of three duets and one solo. It feels like a collection of short stories, or anecdotes. It’s an intimate work in black and white, a very graphic piece showcasing four dancers.”

The two companies will be performing at the Norman Rothstein Theatre on March 6, 7 and 8. For details, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Dana Schlanger is a freelance writer and director of the Dena Wosk School of Performing Arts at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

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