in writing on observing the recent residency of Bebe Miller Company it has me revealing how I come to it. observing bmc is familiar. I knew of Bebe when I was a little girl and dancing. she’s in the library books. i did my undergrad in dance at Ohio University where she and her nyc company are celebrated. I celebrate Bebe, overtly. When I love someone, they know it. They know it, you know it. I know it. I love many people. And B is one.
I met Bebe on recommendation of Colleen Leonardi as a possible replacement in her service as administrator for BMC. It was 2011, I’d just moved to Columbus and helped open Feverhead and was dancing everywhere with CoCo Loupe and Noelle Chun and Lindsay Lapointe and got to know Colleen, and she connected me to Bebe. I sent my credentials, we spoke on the phone, met at the Starbucks on campus. During our interview I reminded her “You’re Bebe-fucking-Miller” I got the job before the premiere of ‘A History’ and its international touring residencies, a collaboration with William Forsythe’s ‘Motion Bank’ , an archival installation exhibit called ‘Tracing History’, and the creation of the BMC ebook ‘Dance Fort’. It was good times. Very good. I participated mostly from my admin screen (#fomoisreal) but i helped things happen that are good for the world. and I felt lucky to watch her make. to watch movement make. a degree could not touch this.
during the brief years I served as administrator for bebe miller company i was simultaneously teaching and making at feverhead and performing with friends and receiving choreographic commissions and in total something like 25K in city grants to pay dozens of folks, including myself to make work and travel and participate in the dance events that I conceived/produced for the local community as an independent. It was a deep 3 years. Then I began graduate school- stopped admin for bmc, quieted down on the community forefront, and graduate this May with an mfa in dance from the ohio state university. It’s been 2 of what is a very different deep three years and along the way I’ll have taken most every course Bebe has taught in the realm of technique, improvisation, and composition before she retires in December. We’ve collaborated on a few outside things, including dog tricks. She is a mentor. She is a friend. we talk in lengths and bits about things. so i’ve a sort-of inside eye to her work. her company is family(ar); observing bmc is natural.
asking questions. not always out loud. so curious. so deft.
time takes itself out in the bodies moving.
she looks. sees something. goes toward it.
she wonders what she does, wonders what she doesn’t.
i am in awe of the rigor in all aspects of bmc residencies. the play and helpless love of what is doing. the collaborating dancers are incredible in a making that is vulnerable and fortified. they are muses to her, and she to them.
she invites herself to be confused. and to be certain. she is brilliant.
Cole G 